Read Online The Adam Enigma by Mark; Ronald C.; Reeder Meyer - Free Book Online Page B

final resting place of the Jesus Christ’s Holy Grail, brought to the sacred isle by Joseph of Arimathea, who later became the first Christian bishop of Britain. Archaeologists generally downplayed these claims as being a publicity stunt by the monks to raise money for a new abbey after the original Glastonbury Abbey burned down in 1184. The town, itself, located 20 miles south of Bristol, had been an Iron Age village and was over 3,000 years old. The fact that early agriculturalists had created a town on this spot was more than enough to pique his interest. The later tales of Arthur and the Holy Grail were little more than icing on the cake. Ramsey had gotten some unusual low-frequency electromagnetic readings near the ruins of the old abbey.
    One day while walking through the town square carrying his equipment and gauging the sky that was roiling with thick with dark clouds, a breeze whipped up, screaming of a downpour in just a few minutes. He had just decided to go to a pub, where he could wait out the storm, when an old man reached out a claw of a hand and snagged his windbreaker. “You need a guide,” he said flatly.
    Ramsey turned and started in surprise. The man was bent and twisted like a goblin, with a sharp nose stuck out from a gaunt face. Hair sprouted from his ears in tufts and his bushy eyebrows shadowed deep sockets that gleamed with a dark inner light. A long beard flowed down his chest. When he looked closer, Ramsey saw one of the man’s eyes had been plucked out, as if offered in a sacrifice like Odin at the well of Mimir. The other was slate gray and burned with the intensity of an exploding star.
    Ramsey set his equipment down. “Why do I need a guide?” he asked, amused at the man’s boldness. He thought he was just an old drunk who needed money and like the twelfth century monks of Glastonbury Abbey was concocting a need where there wasn’t one.
    â€œYou’ll never find what’s important here unless someone points you in the right direction.”
    Ramsey scratched the beard he’d been growing since the field research started three months ago. The old man looked harmless, so why not wait out the storm inside with him. “What’s your name?”
    â€œLoki.”
    Ramsey hid his surprise. Loki was a shape shifter and the trickster of the Aesyr , the Norse gods.
    The old man said, “My family has lived in these parts since Glastonbury was a muddy jumble of thatch-roofed huts. We came here during the Iron Age. Not many can recall that far back.”
    For a sharp breath Ramsey thought the old man might be crazy, but there was something interesting—not just about the town—but about the man himself. His senses honed in on the old man. He stood on the sidewalk by the short wooden bench, as though he owned this spot on the town square. Others seemed to walk around him, not out of fear but respect. Some even nodded. “Mr. Loki, let’s go inside to the brew pub before we get drenched by the storm and you can tell me what’s special about this place.”
    The ancient man leaned back against the bench. He looked up and his good eye narrowed as though it were some kind of laser piercing the thunderclouds forming overhead. After a minute they roiled away and sunshine came through. The ever-curious aspect of Ramsey’s character sparked his interest in the old man. And what the old man said next rewarded his curiosity.
    â€œWhat you’re trying to detect, that equipment can’t find,” the old man said. He smiled and his teeth were all white and solid, not like the old yellowed and broken teeth of a man who was supposed to be ancient and wizened. Ramsey realized also his voice was not raspy and shattered like so many old people who drank or smoked too much. It held a touch of lyricism, like a wandering minstrel, and seemed to match the man’s tattered clothes, a motley of leather jerkin, a ruffled shirt, and coarse