Three days later I was staring up at a bookshelf holding a thick, dusty smelling book in my arms, debating whether it was really worth buying. I had enough on my plate as it was, but I hadn't been able to get my mind off of what I had come across in that mythology book the other day. Something nagged at me, urging me to pursue the strange theory. I thought I was going crazy. Of course Atlantis didn't exist. It had been a tale told by a philosopher, a place created solely to carry the themes Plato enjoyed spinning his stories around. Throwing the Irish gods into the mix made it even less believable. But... what if there was some truth behind the legend? There often was, wasn't there? A small grain hidden among the embellishments told by storytellers?
Could it have something to do with the crash? Or about the man who saved you?
"He isn't real," I muttered to myself.
The plane crash was real, you can't explain that away. No one had any answers as to why it went down. No one had any answers about why you were the only survivor....
There has to be an answer.
I scanned the shelf one more time. I was sure that there was a book here that talked about local myths. As a tourist attraction, there were bound to be some souvenir books for tourists on our own local legends and myths. I wanted to see if any of them mentioned the Tuatha De Danann, or Atlantis itself.
"Are ye looking fur anything specific, lassie?" my elderly boss asked me in his thick burr.
"Do we have anything on local myths and legends?"
Mr. MacLean chuckled, his eyes shining mischievously. He hadn't needed to ask, I'd been standing in this section for nearly ten minutes. He was probably waiting to see how long it would take me to realize things had been moved. "Aye, I just had Christian move evry'hing over t' th' display window," he said, gesturing over to the big bay window at the front of the shop that had definitely changed since yesterday, and I had completely missed it.
"Thank you," I said and hurried over to check out what we had in stock. Christian was my coworker that rarely seemed to speak. Tall, handsome if you liked sharp angular features, and oftentimes brooding, he worked quickly to get things done and was usually finished with all of his objectives for the day before I even arrived.
The display looked nice. Christian wasn't sloppy with his work, no matter how fast he got it done. A three tiered table sat about three feet behind the window. On the top there were several kids' picture books about the stories of Ferryhill, the Kraken, mermaids, and the Dark Waters. The latter of the list was what the townsfolk commonly called the area of the Atlantic just off the West coast of Scotland, as there had been many reported supernatural sightings in the area over the centuries. The shelf below it held all sizes of figurines, toys, and plushies of pirate ships, mermaids, squids and other sea creatures. The final shelf held old textbooks, journals, and newspaper clippings that were more for browsing than for sale. These were the ones I was interested in. I put the books that I already had down and scanned the titles.
Atlantis: Fact or Fiction?, The Kraken: the Truth Behind the Myth, and a local author's own The Dark Waters caught my eye, whereas Mermaids Exist! and the Legend of Blackwater Town seemed a bit too corny for my taste. I picked out the ones I thought would be useful and carried them up to the front counter.
Mr. MacLean's salt and pepper bushy eyebrows climbed his forehead when he saw the books. "Christ lass, ye're gunna break yer back lugging those things around."
"I'm fine," I smiled as I placed the stack next to the register. "Do you have a piece of paper and a pen that I can borrow?"
He rolled out a long slip of receipt paper from the cash register and handed me a pen, then began to ring up my purchases. I strode back over to the display and scribbled down the headlines and dates of the old newspapers, several of which dated back to before I was born.
I asked him to pay for it with my next paycheck and stuffed my finds into my bookbag. He was still watching me curiously. "Is something troubling ye, lass?"
"No sir," I responded with a smile. "Just doing a project for school."
He watched me expectantly as I stood there smiling at him, suspecting that wasn't all there was to the story. I sighed. "Well, I do think it's a very interesting subject. I'm sure you understand." Everyone in town knew about the wreck of Flight 427 and my miraculous survival.
He nodded and continued to watch me, as if he knew I had something nagging at me to ask him the question that would make me seem a bit off my rocker. But what the heck, I already seemed somewhat obsessed with the subject anyway. "Do you by any chance have anything that goes more into depth about the Tuatha De Danann? Maybe some stories about some of them visiting Scotland?" I asked and bit my lip. Part of the reason that I had wanted to work for Mr. MacLean over any of the other bookstores in town was because of his specialty in collecting rare books. There was an entirely separate section in the back of the shop that was devoted to them. If anyone had a book containing lore on the supposed Fae, it would be my boss.
"Ah," he chuckled. "I thought ye might ask summat along those lines."
"You did?" I asked him, following him to the back of the store.
He motioned for me to follow him behind the counter into the back room, where he headed for a small bookshelf along the left wall. I always felt like I was walking into the restricted section of the Hogwarts library whenever I came back here. Sure, I was an employee of the Blackwater Lexicon, but I felt like I wasn't qualified to even look at most of these ancient tomes. Many of them should be, and probably had been, studied by university professors or discovered my archaeologists. "I also ken 'at ye aren't gunna have enough on yer next check t' pay fur a chapter o' one o' these."
My brow furrowed. "Then why are you showing them to me?"
Mr. MacLean pulled a purple bound book out of the shelf and blew dust off of it, directly at me in a teasing fashion, causing me to sneeze. "Because, lass, I trust ye. I ken how yeh are wi' books. Yeh treat each an' every one o' them like they're goin' t' turn t' ashes in yer hands. I'm gunna let ye take one home t' study."
My mouth formed a little 'o' and I gently took the book from his hands. "Are you sure? I don't want to damage it."
He gave me a warm smile. "O' course, lass. Jus' be careful not t' cram it in with yer others. Now off wi' ye."
I triple-wrapped it with plastic bags and carefully placed it inside of a separate bag to carry. As I did so, I noticed some of the writing on the cover. "Uh, Mr. MacLean? Is this book in English?" I asked.
He let out a laugh. "Nae. Tha's in Gaelic."
I should have known he'd wait for me to figure it out. I tracked down a Gaelic to English dictionary and put it up on the counter to purchase. Mr. MacLean waved his hand at me. "Ye jus' take 'at wi' ye, lassie. Enjoy learning a new language."
I grinned my thanks and stuffed it in my bookbag along with the rest before I lugged it all out to my bike. It was an awkward ride home, to say the least, but one that I was familiar with. My aunt and uncle had told me years ago that I could take over the library in the castle, happily encouraging my bookworm nature. I was always bringing new books home.
The ride took a good half hour thanks to it being uphill and by the time I got to the lower bailey of the castle I thought my legs might die. I made the ride often, but it never failed to kick my butt. I made it to the library and set the books down just in time for the staff to announce that dinner was ready. After debating whether it was worth trudging back down the stairs to the dining hall, I decided that the books could wait. Besides, Amelia always made amazing chicken dumplings.
I took the list of newspaper titles and a notebook down so I could work on something while I was eating. The list went from the things that I thought would be the most helpful in my search to things that may or may not have any pertinent information.
"What are you working on today, Rae?" Uncle Gale gestured to my notebook with his fork.
"School stuff," I said around a mouth full of food.
"What subject?" Aunt Keeva asked.
"Er..." I swallowed my food. "Mythology."
"That's interesting," she said. "You know, this town has a place in historical mythology? Ferryhill is rumored to be a place with a crossing of several hundred ley lines, an area where immense power that travels the world intersects in one place. Some believe that the Bermuda Triangle is also one of these so called lay line intersections."
"Ley lines huh?" I asked. I recalled seeing something that mentioned ley lines being some sort of traveling path for the supernatural and otherworldly. I finished my dinner as fast as I could and sprinted up to my room to check it out, leaving my cousins playful calls of "workaholic" and "nerd" behind.
After about an hour of searching I found a book that was open to the public online called the Supernatural Almanac that held what I was looking for. According to this book, ley lines shifted a little bit depending on the seasons. It had something to do with the energy the pathways absorbed from the sun and the moon, and would shift as far as they could, much like plants, to get the energy. I looked more specifically at the map of the lines over both Ferryhill and the Dark Waters and sure enough, many more lay lines intersected over the areas during the summer and fall months. If the theory was correct, all of the energy caused strange and inexplicable things to happen. Many of the strange sightings and happenings mentioned in the newspaper articles I'd written down at the bookstore coincided with the timeline, as did the crash of Flight 427.
I sat back against my bed and stared at my laptop with a frown. There were several spots of intersections all over and around the UK, which made me wonder if that might be why Scotland was such a superstitious place. Perhaps all of the legends came from all sorts of strange energy phenomenon that people had mistaken for supernatural incidents and creatures over the years.
"Could there actually be something to this?" I asked myself. My eyes wandered up to the URL. www.supernaturalconspiracies.com. It could be some random crazy guy's idea for all I knew, there was definitely no attempt at scientific proof on the matter. I glanced at the clock on my nightstand. It was 1:00am. I'd spent at least five hours reading newspaper articles and chasing fairy tales. I felt ridiculous, but I couldn't deny that nagging voice.
There had to be an answer.