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BEWARE THE DRUID MOON
By John Kenneth Martin
iUniverse, Inc.
Copyright © 2012 John Kenneth Martin
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4759-4656-7
Chapter One
A Visit With Grandfather
I was born, I'm told, during a lunar eclipse in a blizzard shortly after the Great War; the war to end all wars, or so it was said. Looking back over the great many years man has ruled this planet, I suppose there hasn't been a time when war wasn't evident. Since the end of the Great War in 1918, there has never been a moment without war or hostility somewhere in the world.
Yet, the Greatest of Wars this planet has ever seen is one that was never marked down in the history books. It was briefly alluded to in the Holy Bible, but most people don't even know it ever happened. Ironically, it is without a doubt the most important war ever. This is not a conflict of territories or egotistical supremacy of leadership. It is a war of conscience. It is a war of souls, a war of spirituality, a great sacrifice for the lives of the dead. Yes, the lives of the dead.
The dead who, with the permission of the God of the Underworld, would visit us on Halloween.
I never would have known anything about it myself, but for the adventures I would encounter in my youth. It all began with a simple visit with my Grandfather.
Grandfather was rumoured throughout the family to be an eccentric old man who was "a little off his rocker". I never saw him that way. He was a grand old man; tall and robust. His billowing white hair shone bright compared to his tanned skin. The crow's feet that extended his eyes became more pronounced as he smiled. And what a glorious smile he had. It was all he had to do to make you feel at home. The warmth and love this man emanated from every pore of his being was unbelievable. Grandmother was the female version of him. She also had thick white hair, which she bundled into a bun behind her head, but she had the most gentle eyes you could imagine flanking her tiny round nose. I guess two people living together for all those years tend to rub off on each other.
Every year while my Grandmother was alive they would come from New Brunswick to visit us at Christmas. They always brought neat gifts, like when I was thirteen, they bought me a bike. Not just any bike; but a state of the art, aerodynamic, Motorbike. It didn't actually have a motor, but it looked like a "hog" ... It was chocolate brown from the rack behind the seat through the frame towards the front where it melted into caramel. The fenders and chain guard were also caramel. The white-wall balloon tires were basically dark strawberry as were the handle grips and pedals. But the pièce de résistance was the fibreglass "gas tank" atop the frame. It sported a beautiful white wing sticker with black letters, "MOTORBIKE". It was a little big, but of course they assumed I would grow into it, which I did—and just as quickly grew out of it.
"You must always be prepared for anything," Grandfather would always say. He gave me the bike in hopes that I would join the Boy Scouts. I did, and I mastered all the knots and earned all the badges.
Grandfather stopped coming out when Grandmother died, but he would still send a card and a present at Christmas and on my birthday.
We lived in a lower duplex in Montreal. This is a house with another house built on top. A spiral banister flanked the outside wooden balcony and stairs, the wood always painted in battleship grey and the wrought iron in black. The basements were always whitish-grey cement while the façade was red brick. The houses joined together, row on row, to the end of the paved black street. Each morning you could hear the clippity-clop of the horse-drawn milk wagon delivering bottles of milk to all the mothers in the neighbourhood. In the back was a small yard separated from our next door neighbour by a fence of various sizes and colours, while the neighbours behind us were also separated by a lane, where all the kids would join us to play.
Dad rented the upstairs to a young French couple that wanted to have children but were having problems. He said that their rent paid our rent. We lived for free, or so he thought until Mom would nag him about repairs, which he said he couldn't afford.
It was south of downtown, a very quiet residential area with lots of immigrants, mostly European nationals, but it was a very inexpensive area.
This is where the immigrants would live until they could afford to live in a slightly higher, socially acceptable town.
Next door to us lived Antoinette. She was the most incredibly beautiful woman ever; and she was only thirteen. She was tiny and well shaped with long flowing black hair and a little button nose. Her chestnut eyes glittered when she smiled and it took but a glance for her to see right through your very soul.
I used to go into the fenced-in backyard just to show off to her. And she would do the same. She would simply smile and I would melt. She would laugh and the world was right. I knew without a doubt that this was the girl I would marry some day and I believed that she felt the same.
Nothing in the world could keep us apart. We both knew it was written in the stars. Jonathan and Antoinette destined to be the greatest lovers this world had ever known. Together we could conquer the world.
Her parents did not think so, however, and always seemed to accompany her everywhere.
If she went to the store, they were there. If she went to the park, they were there. If she were caught talking to me or getting too close, she was told to come in the house.
They were old world people with old world values. I didn't care about their values or their worlds. All I knew was that Antoinette and I were meant to be together. I loved her and she obviously loved me. As far as I was concerned, that was all that mattered. Had I been older, and more independent, I would have asked her to marry me, without hesitation on my part at all. But then again, I was only about fourteen at the time.
One day, we went to visit my Aunt and Uncle in the country on one of those long, hot summer long weekends. They had a small red brick bungalow with a good parcel of land, still half forest-like. The roads were unpaved with old oil splashed on them to keep the dirt from flying everywhere, and ditches were trenched to drain water on both sides of the streets. We had a great time eating barbecue and going to the old pond, swimming, and hanging with my local friends. Not a care in the world. Summer was meant to be this way.
It was only three days, but it seemed like a whole vacation. What a great time we had. Life was so good to me. What in the world could possibly go wrong to a fourteen year old? I passed my grade. I had a lot of friends. Not too many enemies. And I had a girl who loved me and who would have made anybody envious. I was on top of the world.
When we returned on Monday evening, I saw people moving into Antoinette's upstairs flat.
Franticly, I asked her twelve year old cousin, "What happened?"
He said, "They moved away."
"Moved! Where?" I recoiled, desperately.
"I'm sorry; I'm not allowed to say."
"You can't tell people where she moved to?" I countered.
"Well, actually, I'm not allowed to tell ... you ..."
I hopped on my bike and searched every street. I searched every day in all parts of the city for the rest of that entire summer. By late fall, I gave up my search and pretty much stayed in the house, doing nothing but pining for my sweet Antoinette.
She had slipped into oblivion.
I missed her. I missed her laugh. I missed her charm. I missed that most incredible voice, I swear, the voice of an angel ...
Could I ever fall in love again? I don't think so. Antoinette was all I could think about those next couple of years. How could I ever think of anyone again?
I swore I would never fall in love again, and built up an invisible stone wall around me that was indestructible. No one could ever penetrate it.
I lusted for girls as I grew—I suppose this was a normal process—but I never allowed myself the joy and heartache of falling in love again.
The loss of Antoinette was too much for me. I could never live through such a loss again. Nor did I want to.
I decided I would simply pursue my academic endeavours and spend my time trying not to think about her. Of course, that was impossible. I realized that I was not yet considered a man, but I believed I had honestly fallen in love ...
Nearly two years had passed. I went to school, played with my friends and adjusted to life in a house without my Antoinette next door. The pain I felt when she came to mind was slowly fading away, and I was able to live a life as near to normal as you could imagine, even if life was boring; that is, until a telegram came from my Grandfather asking us to visit him.
Visiting my Grandfather in New Brunswick was a most incredible journey. We packed our bags as if going on holiday, although up until now I hadn't really been anywhere. I couldn't have been more than sixteen at the time, I suppose.
My father had taken a week's vacation time from his construction laboratory company. Time off was almost forbidden where he worked. There were certain times of year we wouldn't see him at all. Usually they worked quite late doing tests and analysis and stuff. At that time I really didn't understand what it was he did or why he had to stay late. Sometimes I thought he stayed late to avoid Mom who, ironically, would nag him about being late.
Dad was tall and very thin, with slightly thinning black hair and wire rimmed glasses. Mom, almost a decade his junior, was the opposite: quite short, with a roundish, girly figure and fiery red hair, although that was actually from a bottle. She started going white early. I don't know the original colour. Perhaps it was red after all.
Me? I was a freckled, skinny kid with long hollow legs as my father used to say. I bore 'The Martin Crown' as the family called it. Brownish blonde hair, which around the forehead looked like the letter "M" that was almost whitish blonde, and was flaunted more by the fact that my parents always had me in a brush cut because it was 'butch', as they said in those days, or tough, to do so. This was the Irish thing to do.
Mom was Irish. Dad was English. Dad was sophisticated and was brought up learning gentlemanly behaviour and good manners with a good education. Mom was slightly more brusque, with almost no education. Maybe these were the things that attracted them to each other. Maybe each one being rather extreme in their breeding found the opposite rather enchanting. Opposites attract, I suppose. I loved my parents very much, but to this day I could never understand the attraction. Never have you seen two more opposite people. They were constantly at odds, always fighting about something. There was almost nothing they agreed on, and the confrontations were so emotional and fervent you would think they would wind up killing each other. And yet they were solidly in love until the day they died. They might berate each other until dawn's early light, but let someone else say the slightest thing about the other and look out. They never went to bed angry. They always resolved the problem, no matter what. Mom used to tell me, "If you don't fight, there is no passion. Without passion you exist ... in a dead marriage ... of people who don't care for each other." Mom was full of such sayings. She was very superstitious, too. Dad thought it was all 'Gobbledygook'.
And now, with them arguing about anything and everything, I was supposed to get some shut-eye for the long trip to Grandpa's house tomorrow. Do you really think I could sleep? I tossed and turned as if it was Christmas Eve. Then, in the early morning hours, we called a cab and off we went to the train station.
Coming from a relatively quiet suburb, the crowds and noise, the hustle and bustle of downtown Montreal was always exciting. The neon lights, the flashing signs and store-front displays were almost overwhelming. The streets aligned with horse-carts and cars trying to avoid the street-car buses. Finally, after enduring the traffic to our destination, we embarked into Windsor Station.
This was a very old building that looked very much like an old stone castle with turrets and towers, and at every angle you could see at least one of the many stone-carved gargoyles surrounding the perimeter. We breezed in through the glass front doors and entered. There was a huge echoing hall three stories high and at least a football field long. It had great marble floors with glass floor to ceiling windows surrounded by plaster walls painted with murals, mostly of old Biblical scenes.
As we walked towards the passage to the platform we passed a number of life-sized, painted statues of angels and heroes from the Great War. They were so realistic they almost seemed alive. I was getting spooked looking at some of them. Their eyes were alive as we passed. They seemed to be looking at us. Each soldier seemed to have a special significance and every Angel was special in some way, but I did not recognise their importance at that time.
As we walked through the grand hall, our footsteps echoed eerily, and I realised that we were not sneaking by anyone. There was no question that we were there. All of the world must have known we were going through. Then, suddenly, I realized that we were mysteriously alone in the hall at that time, in a city of millions, and we were very noisy. I could hear echoes from our footsteps and billowing reverberations to anything we said. And we said a lot. My parents kept pointing out fascinating events and phenomena that were prevalent to the statues that were present. Strange that they really did not notice that we were alone ...
Most statues were heroes, which depicted a specific battle in the Great War. Ypres, with two statues, one with a gas mask; Mount Sorrel; the Somme; Passchendaele Ridge; Amiens; Cambrai; Mons; and the one I just learned about at school, Vimy Ridge. Between each soldier was an Angel. Delicate creatures they were. Heads bowed solemnly, with eyes saddened, perhaps by the warring men beside them.
Then at the very end of the hall was a very large, illustrious statue of an Angel, welcoming us into his hall. His name was Michael. He was by far the most glorious and magnificent statue in the hall. He was larger than the rest and more colourful. He stood at least twelve feet tall and had the most expressive look of all. His wings must have spanned over twenty feet wide. He did not seem to be delicate as the others were. He was obviously an Angel to reckon with.
We turned down the corridor and descended down a ramp to the platform. I turned back to have another look at the statue of Michael because it was so unbelievable; curiously, he somehow seemed to have turned while I wasn't looking, and was still looking at us! His eyes stared passionately, intensely. A cold shiver ran up my spine to the back of my head, causing pins and needles to race to the top of my head while my heart pounded in my ears, blocking out every other sound. He looked as if he were real.
I felt uneasy and intimidated by this gargantuan statue and the fact that he seemed to be watching us ... but hey ... honestly, it's only a stone carving of a mythological character. I turned my head and focused on the trains.
Oh, and what an experience the platform was—it seemed like miles of wood slatted floors, bordered by a ditch of rails on the left and rows of kiosks to the right. Surely a half-mile of tiny stores selling everything from perfumes to magazines.
And what a monster machine the train turned out to be. There was one rolling into the station as we arrived. What a noise. What a rumble! I had never heard or felt anything like this before. The whole of my body shook under the earthquake-like thunder of the beast.
The black engine had to be a mile high and a mile long, with steam billowing out of a huge chimney in front and wheels turning with those silver arms pushing back and forth. I had seen trains from the roadside behind the gate, but I never thought they would be this incredible up close. I literally reached my hand out and touched her as she passed by. As it came to a stop on the platform and the passengers slowly got on, the steam faded.
At this point of my life this was easily the most exciting thing I had ever seen ... or felt.
My father went to the ticket booth in the middle of the mezzanine through a large crowd that was somehow amiss in the large hall, and returned a few minutes later. We were bound to ride the 609 to New Brunswick.
Three or four trains passed before 609. But then it arrived and we climbed the gigantic stairway to the pulsating train. We walked in awe to our seats. Never had any of us seen so much extravagance. Inside, the seating car was huge, with lots of room to get to your compartment and all burgundy leather seats when you got there. I got the window seat. Wow! All I could say at this point was WOW!
I was sitting high above the platform and watched the other travellers as if I were watching from a higher plane. I had never been so high before. "Is this how God sees us?" I wondered. I almost felt I could say something and change their lives. (Continues...)
Excerpted from BEWARE THE DRUID MOON by John Kenneth Martin Copyright © 2012 by John Kenneth Martin. Excerpted by permission of iUniverse, Inc.. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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