Horace of the Horizon-Part 5

Surinder dabbed the corner of a grilled cheese sandwich into the blob of ketchup on his plate as he looked up at me, using his free hand to gesture for me to sit.

“Holy crap, Surinder” I said as I pulled myself up to the table in front of him. “When you’re not in the back of a van you almost look human”

“Horace!” he exclaimed through a mouthful of food “This is maybe serious shit, I don’t know,”

As he said it he tapped his finger on the yellowish file folder that rested by his right arm.

“Serious?” I asked

Surinder leaned forward but then caught himself as the waitress; a middle aged Greek woman with heavy highlights approached our table.

I looked at her and smiled “Coffee please” and then after several moments of weighing the change in my pocket added “and a large plate of French fries”

I leaned back in my chair as I watched the waitress walk away. “Well? “

Surinder looked around surreptitiously. It was making me more than a little apprehensive.

“You aren’t in trouble are you? Shit!” I hissed at him in a lowered voice.

He shook his head “No, well maybe, well remember that flash drive? “

I threw my head back and covered my face with my hands “God take me now!” I moaned

“I knew taking that thing was a bad idea, but OK since were both going to get fired or charged or whatever, might as well at least get something interesting out of it”

“Right then!” Surinder said as he nudged the file folder towards me “This is crazy shit Horace, like Big trouble In Little China meets Indiana Jones trouble”

He opened up the folder to show me several printed out sheets of notes.

“A bunch of these science types went and cracked open some room under the sphinx that apparently they knew about for years but didn't want to tell the public and so they went in and found all these hieroglyphs and shit”

The waitress slid a plate in front of me, oblivious to our conversation.

“So mummies curse?” I asked as I stabbed several French fries with my fork in rapid succession. “Go on,” I urged him as I stuffed the French fries in my mouth and took a long noisy drink from my coffee cup.

An expression somewhere between pain and utter disgust flashed across Surinder’s face before he continued, choosing to ignore my mummy quip. “Apparently there are these stone tablets that have magical powers if you know how to activate them, and they can open up some sort of big gate when arranged in the right manner. The only thing is that the gate needs something called the Benben stone to be placed on top of the great pyramid for it to be controlled but no one knows where the fuck that is so this Suty guy who was maybe a bit of a science hero to me straight up steals some notes from one of the other science guys, a Dr. Adam Ray Jr. and..”

“What!?” I interrupted “that’s my dad who I hadn’t spoken to in a dozen plus years and now ...”

Surrinder shrugged as he picked up his over sized glass of cola and put the straw to his lips. “That Suty guy is like a hero to the pure science, let’s think rationally crowd, but after reading this? Dude, the brother is hardcore into the occult and talks like he believes it, and well these notes from your dad…” Surinder screwed up his face and then he chuckled “for real Rostau, this Dr. Ray guy is serious news, how come he never gave you any super smart genes? Heck I won’t even ask about the different last names..but you’d think the son of a super scientist..”

I threw my hands up in the air incredulously “yeah fine, extra extra read all about it, Horace Rostau is not a genius”

Surinder looked down for several seconds as if studying the file. After several seconds he looked up at me. “Sorry” he said quietly “You know I didn’t mean”

I shrugged and waved my hand to urge him to go on with what he had been talking about. Thankfully he picked up on my cue and continued.

“ So this all started years ago, I don’t know how long and they have a bunch of these tablets, but not all of them, enough to open the door so you can throw something...or someone in, but not get them out again. Just once though, but he claims to have done it to that Graham Hancock guy so unless this is all rubbish Hancock is off spreading his pseudo history in some whacked out other dimension.”

He paused to dart his hand out to nab one of my French fries.

For once I resisted the compulsion to protest loudly to the erosion of the sanctity of my French fry plate but instead pulled the chipped corningware plate closer to me.

Without acknowledging his slight against me he continued “So they cant find all the tablet thingies, but Suty he thinks if he had the benben stone that he could use it to locate the rest of them.”

I shrugged and spoke through a mouthful of fries “Ok sure, but there is no benben stone so who cares, Im not sure what the big deal is other than that stealing my dad’s research makes this guy a serious dick? “

Surinder nodded “Ok, well there is a bit more” he said as he fidgeted in his seat and adjusted his T Shirt, emblazoned with a fading New York Knicks logo. “He got a bunch of your dad’s notes encoded and he figured out bunch of it, most of it maybe and it seems your dad was maybe travelling along the same path and well they both seem to think someone came very close before to opening the gate” He leaned toward me and tapped his finger for emphasis “Right here in Canada, “

I looked back at him blankly “But there is still no stupid stone, so not that exciting”

Surinder grabbed what he had left of his hair in frustration “yes but wait Horace! There was or maybe is an alternate method, and alternate device. I’m not sure if they mean the actual real thing, but your dad refers to it as the ‘Holy Grail’ and both of them seem to think it’s hidden in Canada and your dad thinks it has something to do with Zep Tepi as he refers to it as ‘the cup of the first time, risen up and brought from the east’ and well that’s what Zep Tepi is… the ‘first time’”

People at the other tables gave me dirty looks as I stopped to blow my nose.

Honk!!

HONNNNNNNK!!

Surinder cringed and muttered the name of a religious figure he didn’t believe in.

When I was done I laughed and shook my head “No not zep tepi, at least not that zep tepi.”

Surinder looked sincerely perplexed “There is more than one zep tepi?”

“it didn't say ‘zep tepi’ did it?” I asked.

Surinder shook his head. “Ok yes it did say 'first time' but 'zep tepi' is what these people obviously mean in this context,”

I dabbed my tender nose with my ratty tissue “If all of this stuff just worked like that it would all be figured out in a week”

Surinder gave me his ‘you don’t know what you’re talking about face which put my teeth on edge.

“Then tell me Horace, how you know better than these archeologists and Egyptologists?”

“Well first of all,” I said in as authoritative a voice as I could muster “I find it hard to believe that Egyptologist is a real thing or a real word, and secondly they are obviously referring to 1893”

To this Surinder nodded emphatically “Yes, of course what else could be the answer to an ancient mystery found underneath the sphinx 1893! My God Horace! What is 1893?”

“Montreal,” I replied back flatly “Montreal 1893, that was the first time that someone won the Stanley Cup”

I had caught Surinder in mid sip. A fountain of cola sprayed out of his nose as he broke into a mass of choking, cackling gleeful laughter.

I sunk in to my seat and glowered, but knew somehow that I needed to stick to my guns. “It’s the Stanley cup!”

“What’s the Stanley cup?” an older, almost folksy voice asked

We both turned our heads to see Matt Clark, the Sun’s venerable and in most matters of hockey trivia, unsurpassed hockey and sports writer. Almost all hockey. They said in the sixties he covered a bit of boxing as well. No one knew how old he was, at least not for sure.

Surinder and I both sat awkwardly silent, unsure what of any of our conversation we could reveal, or even how much of our conversation he had already eavesdropped.

“Pathetic couple of girls” Clark growled as he pulled out a chair and seated himself at our table. He took the unlit and derelict cigar that hung from his lips and placed it on the table and then helped himself to a handful of my French fries.

“Love the chips here” he coughed and stuffed them in his mouth. A few seconds later a coffee showed up, spiked with Brandy. Clark was uncouth, but he was well connected and he knew when and where a bit of a nicer tip might be appreciated.

“So you think the Stanley Cup is the Holy Grail?” he said with a wheezing chuckle.

Surinder and I shot each other a look and then I turned to Clark and nodded

“Yes, well I think the Stanley cup is the holy grail” I said.

“Well it isn't!” He huffed as he started dumping packets of artificial sweetener into his coffee.

“You know the Stanley Cup is a replica, right?”

Surinder and I both nodded and allowed the craggy newsman to continue.

“Well they have the replica cup they parade around in public, and then the real one or so called in the

Hockey hall of fame, but do you know why the Stanley Cup exists?”

“It was so Canada could have a hockey award, back in the day it was called the Challenge Canada Cup or something like that. Some guy named ‘Lord Stanley’ invented it” Surinder jumped in.

“Ha!” exclaimed Clark forcefully “Close, if you’re looking for what they want ya to believe, but no. Listen here there is a place out East, Nova Scotia they call oak island and they have this pit there that no one can get into because it keeps filling up with water, and well there are all kinds of theories and tall tales about what’s there from Blackbeard’s treasure to the Holy effin grail, and well Fred Stanley our 16^th Earl of Derby is not just a connected guy with a bit of wealth but also a Freemason and he knows darn well what is in that hole. It’s the Holy Grail. The only thing is that he knows that not only does he need to get it out, but that he is going to have a serious hot potato once he does, Part one of the plan was easy, he hired an engieneer from out East who was also a newsman, so he could do a decent job of keeping the story hush hush. Guy by the name of James Creighton.”

I let out a gasp of surprise when I heard this. Clark smiled at me broadly and nodded.

“He is the first captain of the first Stanley Cup team,” I said as a matter of fact

“Yeah, that’s right and yeah he was a sportsman and that’s where Lord Stanley and his Masonic buddies got the idea on how to handle the whole having the Holy Grail thing, and that is to create the Stanley Cup, and to make it look exactly like the Holy Grail, that way they can move either around and not raise too much suspicion, but have an object that was important enough to be respected and protected”

Surinder and I looked at each other and we both despite ourselves let out a snort. Surinder from pure skepticism, and myself from a feeling I really couldn’t describe.

“ You mean the Stanley cup is a model of the cup that Jesus supposedly drank out of?”

Matt Clark made a comme ci comme ca gesture with his hand “Were not too sure on the Jesus part but wouldn’t say no. The Grail cup, no one knows really where it came from, except that it was important to an uber select group of ancient Egyptian priests but might have been older than that,”

He downed a big gulp of his coffee “ But these Freemason people have a hard on for the Ancient Egypt stuff anyways, I mean ancient Egyptians make the pyramids to mirror the stars in orions belt, and we have the ‘three star selection’ after every hockey game! “

Surinder shook his head “No offense, but I just don’t buy that”

Clark returned a cynical look that was equal parts bemused and offended “ believe what you want, but that isnt going to change the fact that Dr. Suty Apeppi has made arrangements to have access to the cup, to the real cup and yes I know about the flash drive you stole”

“It was on the ground! How is that stealing?” surinder protested.

I shrugged “Well you could have returned it once you knew who it belonged to”

I then turned to Clark.

“How could you know about that? “ I asked “Sure you could have seen him pick it up, but how could you know what was on it?”

Clark gave me a hard stare and then twisted in his seat and waved at the waitress. “Yes please, I would like some pie over here, apple, hot,” he then turned back towards us. “When you have been around as long as I have you learn a thing or two, including when to know when you’re asking the wrong fucking questions. I’m trying to help you out here. Please show a little respect.”

I wanted to shrink away as I knew that Surinder would not be one to back down from a challenge.

I was relieved when he replied calmly “ OK, and what is it exactly you are helping us with, I mean if we’re all talking about this gateway opening thing doesn’t that mean he has to get the cup out of the country and to Egypt to stick it on top of the Giza pyramid or something?”

“Maybe not!” I interjected excitedly slapping my hands down on the table “ Not sure if this connects, but I did hear somewhere once that the Royal York hotel is exactly the same height as Giza!”

Clark threw his hands in the air “ah yes! And just down the street from the Hockey Hall of Fame!”

Surinder nodded “OK, I am not going to argue with you two over all this mystical stuff, but Suty Appepi believes it too, I’ll give you that, maybe even Horace’s dad as well, but it’s not like they are going to let him just waltz around with the Stanley Cup on the roof of the Royal York,”

Just then a chirping emitted from Surinder’s shorts. “Excuse me guys” he snapped out a scuffed mobile phone “Hello!” He paused for a moment than continued “Hey Ram! What’s up bro?”

Ram was Surinder’s brother who worked in security.

“Uh huh, yes go on” He said as his features began to ashen.

“Ok no no that’s Ok Ram, its OK thank you for letting me know”

He put the phone back into his shorts pocket.

“Horace I have some really terrible news”

Matt Clark shook his head sadly.

“Son, you don’t know just how bad it is”

And with that he speared his fork into his apple pie.

Horace of the Horizon is intended to be an ongoing story that will unfold right here on Hub Pages in installments.

I will try to get new installments out as quickly as possible, but I do keep a very busy schedule.

Hopefully it wont be more than a few weeks between each episode, but the best way to make sure you never miss an episode is to subscribe to me here, but also check out and bookmark my Blog: The Best Lack All Conviction. You can read all of my articles there as well!

I am far from being any kind of professional writer, but it is something I enjoy doing. I hope you will enjoy it too and enjoy coming along for the ride!

See you next episode!

-Dave

I also welcome any questions you may have and will do my best to answer them!