A Grandfather's Grandfather Clock

About 10 years ago, my aunt’s house was demolished by a tornado. I wasn’t there at the time, only arriving after the house had fallen and my Aunt Mattie had been released from the hospital. While we were there rifling through the debris, I had come across an old grandfather clock that had apparently fallen from the attic. It was just a regular, unexciting grandfather clock. But it struck me as odd as I had lived in that house since my parents died when I was six and I had never seen that clock. Aunt Mattie shrugged it off and just said that it had belonged to her father. Aunt Mattie said she hated the clock, but when Grandpa Charles died, she could not bear to get rid of it. So she had one of the neighbor’s sons bring it to the house and place it in the attic.

It was covered in all kinds of dirt and cobwebs and had that fresh attic smell about it that only intensified as I got closer to it. It probably wasn’t worth salvaging as no one particularly wanted it to begin with, but I like the mechanics of clocks and was somewhat drawn to it. The metal was too bent to bother with, but as I drew closer to the base of the clock, I noticed this little black book. It was old and dusty like the clock that housed it for all these years. When I opened the book, I was a bit taken aback. There appeared to be writing on the pages of the book, but the writing itself did not appear to have meaning to it. It was going to get dark sooner than later, so I pocketed it for later inspection.

I had completely forgotten that I had the book until 2 weeks later while on the bus. I went looking for a pen and rediscovered it there in my jacket pocket. I pulled it out and studied the writings again. It looked like complete jibberish to me. Right about that time the bus made a hard stop which forced me to look up and brace myself when there in the reflection of the window was readable text. It appeared to be in English, but there were a few extra letters strewn about to indicate a dialect, perhaps German or Prussian?

When I got home later that evening, I set up a rig with a mirror and determined that not only were the words written backwards, but the entire book was written from back-to-front. From what I could make out, it was the journal of my great grandfather, Jackob Hoffheinz, during the First World War when he was sent to France. There appeared to be a few references to his girlfriend, Isabella whom he did not later marry, and some anecdotal stories his father had told him about the rise of nationalism and the Ottoman Empire. It was getting more difficult to read, so I threw a few lights on it to see the words better. Instead of illuminating the words, however, the page became covered by a colorful map. I tried to photograph a few, but the images appeared blank every time. Then I tried to draw a few, but the entire book had them and my drawings were not that good. It is like the entire book had another entire book written under it to reveal a second author.

I sat there for hours studying this newfound second layer of maps, drawings and writings. I felt obsessed, or perhaps possessed, with it. All I could do was just look at the book. There were no names attached to the second layer of writing. The writings appear to indicate that the writer had migrated to America via a boat bound for New York. Upon arrival, they found New York too crowded and too filthy, and set off to find more suitable shelter. The wording kind of felt like someone was after them for something. Several maps just showed their experiences with the various types of terrain they were traveling. But as I continued reading, I came across a map that I recognized right away. It was a map that showed a creek in Red Boiling Springs in Tennessee.

Walking around that town was always a nightmare because you had to cross that same creek 20 times to ever get to where you were going, so I knew it well. There were a few landmarks marked on the map, most of which no longer exist today. The Salt Lick Creek splits to form a West and an East section. Between the two, as indicated on the map, there is a circle drawn in blue. Perhaps it is fading ink. The circle did appear to have been in the general area where Aunt Mattie lived, so I decided that I should check it out and check in on Aunt Mattie that weekend.

I traced a current map at about the scale of the map in the book onto a transparency, and then tried to align the transparency to the map in the book to get a better idea of where to look when I got there. After a few more hours of research, I was able to narrow down the area indicated by the blue circle. It was just out of the bounds of Aunt Mattie’s property, but was still a heavily wooded area. Even so, I still have a few acres to search when I got there and decided that if the search needed to start at the crack of dawn, I would need to get there Friday evening. There are plenty of hotels in the area, and Aunt Mattie was at the Donoho, so I went ahead and made the reservation.

On that Saturday morning, I set off to Aunt Mattie’s to roam the woods. I had no idea, really, of what I was looking for, just something that perhaps whispered “I don’t belong in a native forest.” The cell phone wouldn’t pick up in the area and there were no latitude and longitudes in the book’s images. The GPS did appear to work and I noted where I was entering so that hopefully I would be able to find my way back at some point. After a few hours of searching, it was clearly evident that no one has been in these woods in a very long time. I sat down on a fallen log to eat my PB&J that I had made for lunch when I noticed a rather huge, somewhat rounded rock off in the distance. Large rocks are not unusual, but this one seemed almost dome shaped.

After lunch, I headed off toward the dome rock. Upon closer inspection, it did very much appear to be a regular rock. But as I was walking around it, I fell into a hole. I passed out at the bottom and when I came to, I saw a hallway leading to an inner chamber. Luckily I did not break anything. The chamber was made out of carved rock. It wasn’t a dome, but more of an icosahedral shape with more flattened sides than a dome. For carvings alone, it was a bit ornate. At the center of the chamber was a stone column and sitting atop that column was a metal icosahedron, no – wait, a dodecahedron. It had 12 faces where each face had an ornate rock except for one face which just had an empty circle. Each point had a ball on it. The interior appeared to be empty.

I looked about the room a bit more. I took pictures of the carvings. I couldn’t really decipher any meaning to carvings on the chamber wall. Just before I left, I noticed another rock that was slightly fractured on the ground. I picked it up and thought it looked like it could fit in the one empty hole of the dodecahedron and it did. The moment where the fit was snug, the dodecahedron lit up brightly and emitted a bit of a shockwave. I popped that rock right back out of there and continued exploring the chamber, pushing on different parts of the wall, but nothing else was there. It was getting dark, so I decided to head back.

I spent Sunday with Aunt Mattie before heading back home. On Monday, I made an appointment with one of the curators at the Tennessee State Museum. She was able to identify it as a Roman Dodecahedron, but that it was odd in that normally they do not bear stones whereas the one I brought in contained bloodstone in all of the holes except the one. She explained that bloodstone was typically worn by Roman soldiers to prevent blood loss after being injured on the battlefield. I asked her about the dodecahedron and she explained that no one really knew what they were used for. She asked me where I got it, and I told her in the back yard of my Aunt’s house. A few days later, she had called and said that she had gotten approval to offer me $20,000 for it, and I took the deal. I just never showed her the fractured bloodstone piece.

I spent the money on helping my Aunt rebuild after the tornado. She lived in that house until she died last year. Every night since I walked into that chamber, I have had vivid dreams. Sometimes the dreams are of the chamber itself lighting up with different patterns. Sometimes I dream of fantastic battles and events that are not part of recorded history on Earth.