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Overview
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781490771335 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Trafford Publishing |
| Publication date: | 03/19/2016 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 342 |
| File size: | 440 KB |
About the Author
In writing, Stone enjoys the process of breathing life into characters and situations. His writing reflects a determination to resurrect his treasured parts and places of old Hawaii; monuments that have succumbed the ravages of time at the hands of developers or through Nature's habit of instigating change, weaving them delicately into the fibers of his stories so that those unfamiliar with Hawaii's past can gain an appreciation of what had been.
Read an Excerpt
Hidden So Deep
A Novel
By Stone Spicer
Trafford Publishing
Copyright © 2016 Stone SpicerAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4907-7132-8
CHAPTER 1
Far below ground on the slopes of Mauna Loa, Big Island of Hawaii
A small beam of light, that's all. There was nothing else.
It inched its way down the wall of rock with painstaking slowness, finding its way across her face. The intense burning sensation caught her left eyelid as her hand took a reactive swing to bat whatever it was away. It felt like a recently extinguished match head still smoldering hot being held a breath's distance from her skin, which made no sense as her swatting hand connected with nothing but air.
She'd been unconscious, totally out, for several hours; but the penetrating ray of sunlight brought her back to the surface of consciousness. She instinctively shifted her head, the movement of her hand creating a slight breeze across her face. The resulting pain from moving her head was excruciating. She screamed involuntarily, the echo rebounding as if she were in the bowels of a cave. The agony radiated out from the back left side of her head and continued to pulse throughout her body as nerve endings felt compelled to respond. Her foggy brain registered the action, lesson learned. Viane Koa shielded her face from the sun with her hand and tentatively opened her eyes, but there was nothing to see but the darkness.
Struggling to comprehend the best her mind would allow, she found she had absolutely no recollection of where she was or how she had come to be wherever that was. Her mind was blank — painful and blank.
Her body felt as though it had been rolled over by a cane-haul truck; everything hurt all the way to her toes. All she could be certain of was that she was lying on a very hard, uneven surface, and propped slightly askew by a large lump under her left shoulder. Her right arm was pinned beneath her hip, and she was cold, and her pinned arm was numb — but she still dared not move. There was nothing to see except a hole far above that allowed a ray of sunlight to enter. She watched the strand of light penetrating the darkness, marveling at all the tiny particles of dust dancing in the air in a silent slow-motion waltz in and out of the ray of light. The display was actually beneficial, encouraging her to relax and let go of as much pain as she could find the will to do.
There was a thread of memory floating around in her mind trying to come to life, like the name of an old acquaintance just beyond the mind's reach. Try as she might, she found it impossible to bring that thread to light.
She slowly lifted her left arm, the least painful part of her body, sideways, feeling a rocky edge to the surface she was lying on. It seemed to drop away less than a foot distance from her. Reaching as far over the edge as she could without stretching muscles to the pain threshold, she felt nothing but chilly air and space — and emptiness. A foreboding sensation rippled through her in response.
Unconsciously, she moved her hand to her head and, as she suspected from the sharpness of pain, felt the sticky mess in her hair that had run down into her ear. Unexpectedly, a high level of delayed pain followed after her hand touched the raw scalp wound, and she screamed again; but this time her scream was flooded by a deep level of fear that had been absent moments before. Her nose picked up the coppery scent of blood.
Intentionally, virtually forced, she laughed aloud at the seemingly hopelessness of her situation. At least my humor is not hurting, she kidded herself and then proceeded to force out more laughter. The jiggling of her body, though, hurt too much, so she quickly stopped. Laughter was a strange but learned response to help her think beyond most fears. It was something her father had taught her to do whenever she was in a frightening situation — it wasn't an easy habit to acquire. Do it with as much humor as you can muster, was what he said to her whenever such a situation arose, and your fear will trade places with understanding. An image of Pops, his face displaying a profound concern, tracked across her thoughts. Along with his teaching, he'd also instilled a warning: Keep fear at bay by whatever means you can devise. Unchecked, he'd warned her and her brothers, fear becomes terror, then panic; and at that point, you've lost the battle. Strong advice or not, she felt like crying as his image evaporated into the air.
Her right hip was becoming more and more sensitive to the hard rock beneath her. Attempting a slow-motion move into a more comfortable position, she found it wasn't going to happen without her pushing her system into grave response. Besides the torrent of pain rushing through her with each muscle shift, she again became aware of the soft lump beneath her that wedged her upper back to the side and kept her arm pinned. She ultimately decided it was her backpack to blame as she felt the pull of the straps on her shoulders.
Continuing her blind investigation, she reached in the direction she faced and discovered a wall of rock rising less than an arm's distance away. I'm lying on a ledge of rock encircled by dark, chilled air. She shivered.
Her backpack became a conscious catalyst for her, symbolic of hiking. Her surroundings began to take on clarity as memory began flooding back. It was like opening a bottle of liquid understanding upside down above her head. It was good having clear thoughts return, but those thoughts led to the horrifying reality of where she was; and her disbelief heightened with the memory of how she had gotten there.
She remembered rappelling through a small cave opening on the remote slope of Mauna Loa. She realized it was the very cave she discovered years before and had always wanted to return to explore ever since. Her mind replayed the sudden and frightening sound of her rope breaking far above her head. As a kaleidoscope morphed its patterns, she relived the fantastic cavalcade of thoughts that flooded her thinking during the brief, split-second fall to the rocky shelf. Even in the fleeting moments of her fall, she had time to pray she'd land on the ledge instead of falling beyond into the bottomless abyss below.
As her returning memory began clouding over from loss of blood, the startling impact of her situation slammed into her: she was trapped, on a narrow rock ledge, in the shaft of an old, vertical lava tube thirty feet below the ground. And the worst part? No one knows where I am.
Just as the sheer horror of her situation became agonizingly clear, her thoughts began segmenting and slipping away, pulling her toward a muted state of nothingness.
A peaceful euphoria, a warm breeze, and swaying palms swept over her as her eyelids relaxed and closed, closing out the hurt and closing out the dancing display in the sunlight. A loving presence and brilliant light began cradling her damaged body, gently pulling her deeper into a loving, unseen embrace ...
And all her conscious thought was simply gone.
Gone?
There's more to being simply hidden from sight.
There's ... gone!
There's gone ... but then there's also gone for good; good and gone. Gone forever!
But then there's the sweetness of finding, of rediscovering the hidden and all the unexpected good that rides with that ...
The realization of how our lives would change, though, becomes crystal clear when gone is forever!
CHAPTER 2Early Saturday morning Kapapa Island, Kaneohe Bay, Oahu, Hawaii
Dawn held the promise of being the picture-perfect day to be on an island — that's a very promising statement.
Sunrise was still thirty minutes away but had already staked its claim over the sky for a picturesque pre-sunrise dawn. It was the kind of morning you sense with each breath you take, knowing full well it couldn't be anything but a really good day.
The ocean was malie, flat, not a ripple creasing its surface — liquid mercury at rest in the partially light foreground of a lush landscape. Dawn's coming light over the water's surface began to resemble a huge shiny mirror reflecting the adjacent Koolau Mountains, creating a near-touchable reproduction. The reflection offered an impression of an artist's finished canvas adorning the wall of a fine art gallery — the mountain's face rising into the sky, its identical face reaching down toward the very same sky. A gentle trade wind caressed the air with its softness. The sky, devoid of clouds, silently waited for the sun's first rays to appear above the far horizon, edging the water of the Pacific.
It was, unfortunately, all just a grand illusion. The seemingly picturesque morning was long on promises, but mostly smoke and mirrors — an illusion built on nothing more than learned hopes and desires. That's the way a small band of people on this island would come to see it. Early in life, we learn as children to accept as gospel the camouflage of a day hidden in a sunrise and a calm breeze.
Things had already been set in motion that would have great significance, not only for the six people camping on the island but would soon expand, engulfing several of their friends and loved ones and still continue to magnify.
No one had yet discovered the chaos and uncertainty that the day and the days following would bring into their lives. In fact, no one on the island had as yet stirred from their dream-filled sleep, except for one.
STONE, AWAKE AHEAD OF the sun, crawled on hands and knees from the tent and then stood up, the residue of sleep still thick in his eyes as he gazed out over the ocean appraising the early morning in the dim predawn light. He filled his lungs with the fresh, sweet, salt-laden air, then did it again. His daily routine of rising early was a habit he'd always had and always enjoyed. If, on odd days, he lingered in bed, he would invariably develop a strange sense that he was missing out on something important — something that would compel him to get out of bed, an elusive draw he could never put a name to. He loved this time of the morning with its peace-giving serenity of unspoken promises.
His name was Kensington Stone, though he preferred to be called Stone. When he first officially adapted an abbreviated identity, something friends had been using for years, he discovered, to his wonderment, that he was occasionally asked to explain his one-word name when introduced for the first time. An elderly couple once questioned why his parents, obviously old hippies as they alluded to but didn't specifically say, would choose an unusual name like Stone for a small child. Their observation was followed by a snicker as they travelled off into their own tangled past.
Kensington Stone was the legal listing on his marriage license and divorce decree, as well as on his birth certificate and sundry other such everyday things like the rare — thank God — speeding ticket. The most amusing and amazing incident having to do with his name happened one day when information had to be provided to a customer service representative of the company printing his new order of business checks. The person on the other end of the phone sounded suspiciously like she was, and later confirmed, sitting at a desk in Bangladesh and was having a difficult time spelling Stone, much less Kensington. For simplicity, he preferred his abbreviated identity — it was simple and people were more readily inclined to remember it and, at times, make pleasant comments.
He'd been fortunate in his two-decades-long, now-past marriage to have brought two sons into the world, sons that he was extremely proud of. They, in turn, were raising six children — his grandchildren — and he thanked God each day for that blessing. He didn't get to see them very often because of distance and his wandering spirit; but it never failed to produce a smile whenever any of them crossed his thoughts.
He was a man who loved the outdoors regardless of where he was or what activity he was engaged in. If given a choice, he would lay claim to a mountain trail, enjoy a swim in the ocean or a picnic beside the water, or take a lengthy walk on a deserted beach simply to feel the softness of the sand beneath his bare feet. With the exception of a short time when he was quite young living in Australia, his life had revolved around the waters of Kaneohe Bay.
When not out enjoying nature, he could be found buried in financial charts and company profit and loss statements. He was a financial planner, managing his own company, FSI. He had started Financial Security and Investments after a decade of working as a patrolman with the Honolulu Police Department. His company boasted of a small clientele of very wealthy individuals and had grown quickly by word of mouth after an incident while he was still with HPD. That incident would become a defining moment in his future working career. He'd saved a wealthy politician from drowning at Makapuu Beach, and the man remained a close friend ever since, continually encouraging him as well as endorsing him to many of his equally wealthy friends.
Although he spent his working hours cooped up in an office on Bishop Street, the great outdoors was never distant. Twenty-three stories below his office in the Office Towers building, the waterfront of downtown Honolulu spread out in a panorama of incredible beauty. His view encompassed Diamond Head to the east and Pearl Harbor and beyond to the west. The iconic Aloha Tower and Honolulu Harbor with Sand Island Park farther beyond were centered in his picturesque view. Even the belching steam of the boilers rising from the stacks of the Hawaiian Electric power plant directly below helped to provide a calming ambiance.
When he originally moved into this office, he discovered that he had to keep the huge window shades drawn in order to get any work done. A constant stream of cars ran in both directions on Nimitz Highway, flowing around Hawaiian Electric's yard that straddled the divide of the highway. Tourist buses loaded to overflowing with people from all parts of the world with flashing cameras as they recorded as much of their surroundings as possible paraded past in a nonstop procession. The most distracting was the ever-popular and numerous pink-striped Kaiser Willys Jeeps that tourists, outfitted in brilliantly colored and matching aloha shirts and muumuus, rented in order to find their Hawaiian dream. On work-intensive days, he would admit that if he couldn't be hiking a trail or cruising in his yacht, then at least he was in the position to appreciate all the splendor surrounding him just outside his windows — whenever he dared open the shades to look.
His was a one-man, one-secretary office, so he could shorten the hours he spent working if he chose to; but he took his work quite seriously and was very successful, as he would cautiously admit. He knew in the visceral innards of his heart that he owed all his considerable success to the many clients that trusted him and placed their financial futures in his hands. He wasn't going to let any of them down if he could manage it.
Now, standing a short distance from his tent in the middle of an island, he smiled at nothing in particular other than being present with the day and surrounded on all sides by calm, clear-blue water. A tangible grogginess, the residue perhaps of having enjoyed too much wine the night before, clouded any clear thinking he might have had; but he knew that would soon pass. He couldn't help but wonder when Teri, the love of his life, would wake up and join him. Since meeting Teri White, he found he never felt totally complete without her standing beside him. He was hooked, and he knew it.
As he looked out over the ocean, a troubling awareness suddenly began to overshadow his mood as he raised his arms overhead to stretch the stiffness from his back. The euphoric smile he awoke with faded in response. He began to sense something at odds with the beauty of the day: he intuited that things weren't as they appeared to be — but that was as far as his early-morning wakefulness would allow him to travel. He drew in several more deep breaths, feeling the stretch radiate energy out to his sore muscles.
As much as he loved camping, the ground held a hardness his body was finding reason to fight against. It wasn't like this just yesterday when I was twenty, was it? At fifty-seven, his body was beginning to protest such things as not having a blow-up air cushion to soften the ground. He readily accepted aging as inevitable and had decided long ago that he wouldn't spend time dwelling on it. What was that old saying about changing the things you can and accepting the things you can't? He knew and easily accepted the difference.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Hidden So Deep by Stone Spicer. Copyright © 2016 Stone Spicer. Excerpted by permission of Trafford Publishing.
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