Chapter 2
Chapter Two
As usual, their evening ended with him saying goodbye and then heading down the porch steps so he could make his way back to his rented cottage.
Ben might have allowed himself to experience just the slightest bit of frustration that once again there hadn’t been even the briefest moment when he could have reached out and taken Sidney’s hand, could have pulled her close so he could finally lean down and press his mouth against hers…
but he knew there was no point in dwelling on might-have-beens.
A kiss, if it ever happened at all, would need to occur on her terms, not his.
With everything else she had on her plate, she might have decided that striking up a romance wasn’t a good idea.
Because worrying about whether something would happen between him and Sidney Lowell didn’t seem like a very good use of his time, Ben thought it better to mull over what they’d discussed at dinner, how the odd glitches in the electrical grid and the occasional hiccups of their cell phones might mean something bigger was going on than the usual malfunctions you almost always encountered in modern devices from time to time.
If it really was the portal affecting Silver Hollow and its environs, then it had to be a recent phenomenon, since Sidney had made it sound as if all of these electrical and electronic hiccups were fairly new and not anything she or the other people in town had been dealing with for years.
And if that was the case, then…what? Had something happened to destabilize the portal?
Ben didn’t want to contemplate that probability. He might not have been a professor of physics, but even he could understand that the implications of an interdimensional gateway becoming unstable were nothing less than cataclysmic.
That was why he went straight to his laptop when he got back to the cottage.
The place was too small to have two bedrooms, but it had a little carve-out off the kitchen with a dropleaf table and a pair of chairs that had probably been intended as a breakfast nook, and which he’d turned into a makeshift office.
Sidney had mentioned making some phone calls, although that wasn’t Ben’s intention. All his communications with Henry Ogilvy had been via email, just because it was a lot easier to send the professor images of the Ogham letters they’d found in the forest that way rather than from his phone.
So he wrote a brief email explaining the possibility of odd electromagnetic interference in Silver Hollow and sent it off.
He wasn’t expecting a reply until the following morning, just because by that point, it was after nine o’clock, so he was surprised to see an answer come through less than fifteen minutes later.
That’s an interesting conundrum. I’ll ask around tomorrow and see if anyone’s interested in investigating further. Is it all right if I pass along your contact information if it turns out someone wants to make the trek up there?
Ben wrote back quickly and said that was fine, and Henry replied by saying he hoped one of the physics grad students might want to come and check things out. That seemed to be the end of the exchange, but Ben found himself strangely hopeful as he closed the laptop.
For some reason, he was almost positive that someone would want to come and see exactly what was going on in Silver Hollow…and why.
The next day, Ben met Sidney at one of the trailheads that led into the forest, just as they did every Tuesday morning. Those were the days when she didn’t open the pet shop until noon or sometimes as late as one, allowing her time to go exploring or have a chance to get out and get some fresh air.
Or, as had been the case ever since he’d settled here a month ago, for the two of them to wander through the woods and see if they could detect any signs of interference within the forest, whether human or animal.
Today, they went back to the clearing where they’d first seen the portal, that strange grouping of standing stones like a miniature Stonehenge.
It was nowhere near the new moon, but he and Sidney had already discussed how the little white flowers that looked so much like lilies of the valley were popping up all over the place, so as far as he could tell, the rules the portals used to abide by didn’t seem to be holding any longer.
Was that irregularity the source of the electromagnetic anomalies, or had the glitches somehow shorted out the portal’s routine?
He couldn’t begin to say, since it felt like a kind of “chicken or the egg” situation.
And although he looked forward to having an expert come to town to take accurate measurements and let them know if there really was something haywire with the electromagnetic field surrounding Silver Hollow, he also knew he and Sidney would have to tread carefully.
They couldn’t breathe even a hint that something otherworldly had been going on in these woods for more than a century.
No, they’d have to play this off as your usual garden-variety magnetic anomaly.
The sun was mostly out this morning, a nice change from what had started to feel like perpetual fog.
However, the temperatures were cool enough that if he’d still been living in Southern California, he probably would have put on a long-sleeved shirt.
He didn’t want Sidney to think he was a wimp, however, so he wore a regular T-shirt, although, as usual, he had a lightweight jacket balled up inside his backpack just in case they had an unexpected downpour.
Sidney was dressed much the same as he, with her long brown hair pulled back into a ponytail using a scrunchie that didn’t look as if it was quite up to the task of holding her thick locks in place.
As they walked, he said, “Henry Ogilvy told me last night he would reach out to see if anyone was interested in investigating the glitches we’ve been experiencing, but I haven’t heard anything yet. ”
She smiled. Even in the bright sunlight, her skin looked poreless and creamy. Maybe it was the constant humidity in this part of the world.
Or just good genes.
“Told you it might be harder than you thought to get someone to come out here.”
“The day is young,” he replied, and her smile broadened into a grin.
“True.”
They walked in silence for a few more minutes. He liked that about her, liked that she didn’t see the constant need to chatter. Yes, when they got going, they could talk for hours, but they were also both fine with being quiet when the situation called for it.
By that point, they were getting close to the glade where they’d seen the portal for the first time.
There wasn’t anything in particular to distinguish it from other clearings in the forest except possibly its size, but they both knew it very well because their hikes frequently brought them back here.
Then Sidney paused by a tall sequoia and laid her hand on the rough bark.
“There’s a symbol here.”
At once, Ben moved closer to the tree in question, so close that his bare arm brushed against hers as he approached. Even that faint touch was enough to send a thrill through him, although he told himself this was not the time to get distracted.
Just as she’d said, an Ogham letter had been scratched into the tree’s trunk. By this point, he was familiar enough with the letters to know this was the one for “pine tree.”
Maybe whoever had carved it couldn’t tell the difference between a pine and a sequoia.
This one was even newer and fresher than the letters they’d seen in the oak grove a month earlier.
In fact, Ben could see sticky sap and tar oozing up around the wound in the tree’s bark, which seemed to be a sign that it had been carved there very recently, maybe even within the past twenty-four hours.
Sidney must have noticed the same thing as well, because her brows drew together and she said, “This looks new.”
He nodded. “That’s what I was thinking.”
She glanced around the clearing, and he followed her gaze.
Now he noted other Ogham letters carved into additional trees in their immediate area.
From what he could tell, it looked as if each symbol matched the tree it had been carved into, although he noticed that the letter for “pine” was also used on the sequoia tree.
That made sense. There definitely hadn’t been any sequoia trees in ancient Ireland, so the carver must have used the closest symbol.
Although Sidney hadn’t had the time to memorize the Ogham letters the way Ben had, she seemed to realize there wasn’t anything random about these carvings.
“They seemed to know what they were doing,” she said, although her full mouth still pursed in disapproval, as if she wasn’t very happy about the careful vandalism she’d just seen. “But what’s the point?”
“I have no idea,” Ben said frankly. “A lot of this doesn’t seem to make much sense. Let’s check and see if all the letters are as new as the one on this pine tree.”
“All right.”
By unspoken agreement, they set off in different directions, with him moving to the left and Sidney heading to the right. She’d pulled out her phone and was taking photos of the carvings, and he knew he should do the same thing.
As far as he was able to tell, these new scratches appeared to be the work of a single night. She seemed to have come to the same conclusion, because when they met up on the far side of the grove, her expression had only grown more annoyed.
“Whoever it was, they were a busy beaver last night,” she commented. “I know none of these were here the last time we checked this clearing.”
“No, they weren’t,” Ben agreed. “And although I think they must have been working quickly, they’re still all very precise, almost as if they were using some sort of template rather than freehanding each carving.”
Of course, that begged the question as to why anyone would think doing something like that was a good idea in the first place.