The Fifth Mark - Chapter 8: Beneath the Ridge

The morning sun filtered through a thin veil of clouds as Eli spread the old surveyor’s map across the kitchen table. Beside it lay the faded ledger, open to the page with the strange coordinates—or what they now believed were coordinates. Kate leaned over his shoulder, a mug of coffee warming her hands.

“You sure about this ridge?” she asked, tapping the map.

Eli nodded slowly. “I’d bet it’s this one here. See how the stream curves just below it, like the one we passed last week? The handwriting in the ledger mentions ‘a rise west of the split oak.’ That tree’s still there, or what’s left of it.”

“Then we go today?”

Eli gave a thin smile. “We go today.”

---

By midmorning they were deep in the woods, following the narrow footpath Eli had hiked countless times but now with a different purpose. The trail grew steeper as they approached the ridge, its base thick with ferns and moss-covered stones. Here and there, Kate paused to examine old growth trees, some bearing the scars of past lightning strikes or deep, vertical notches that might’ve once held surveyor’s markers.

“There,” Eli said, pointing toward a cluster of rocks partially hidden by underbrush. A faint line of stacked stones, almost indistinguishable from the surrounding landscape, ran along the base of the ridge like the remains of a forgotten wall.

Kate knelt beside it, brushing away leaf litter. “Looks intentional. But old.”

“Old’s what we’re after,” Eli replied, stepping carefully ahead.

They followed the line to a narrow outcropping—jagged limestone worn down by time and rain. At its base, behind a screen of brambles, was a dark recess. Eli crouched low and pulled back the brush. The smell of earth and damp stone wafted out.

“A cave,” he whispered. “Or a crawlspace.”

Kate squinted into the dark. “How far do you think it goes?”

Eli reached into his pack and pulled out a headlamp. “Only one way to find out.”

---

The passage was tight at first, forcing them to stoop and shuffle sideways. The air grew cool and heavy as they moved deeper. After twenty yards, the tunnel opened into a chamber. Natural formations surrounded them—stalactites hanging from above, water dripping in rhythmic intervals. But something else caught their eyes.

“Look,” Kate said, her voice hushed.

Just ahead, partially buried in silt, was a timber beam—weathered but clearly shaped by human hands. Another lay to its side, and beyond that, a shallow alcove in the wall bore deep gouges, almost like chisel marks.

“This wasn’t just shelter,” Eli said. “Someone worked this place.”

Kate moved her light along the far wall and froze. “Eli.”

A smooth section of rock bore a carved mark—a circle divided by a cross, with what appeared to be an arched feather etched beside it.

Another cipher.

Eli stared at it, the hair on the back of his neck prickling. “This is it. This is Mark Two.”

They stood silently, the faint sound of water echoing off the walls. Somewhere deep within the rock, it felt as though time had paused—waiting for them to uncover whatever had been hidden so carefully, so long ago.

Eli stepped closer to the mark and traced the faint outline with his fingertips. As he did, the floor beneath him gave a low groan.

A stone shifted.

Then, with a grinding sound, part of the wall beside the cipher mark cracked along a hidden seam—and slowly began to open inward, revealing a narrow stone staircase descending into darkness.

Kate stepped back instinctively. “That wasn’t caused by you... was it?”

“I don’t think so,” Eli said quietly.

A cold draft rose from the opening, bringing with it a smell that was neither fresh nor decayed—but something else entirely.

Something ancient.

Eli clicked his headlamp to full beam and peered into the darkness. The staircase curved slightly and vanished into blackness.

Kate’s voice was steady, but tense. “Do we go down there?”

Eli glanced at her, then back at the opening. “We came this far.”

Behind them, somewhere in the darkness of the chamber, there was a sound.

A faint click—like something metal tapping gently against stone.

They turned at once, lights sweeping across the space.

There was nothing there.

But the sound had definitely come from inside the cave.

The Fifth Mark - Chapter 7: Ink and Ash

 

The light from the late afternoon sun slanted through the workshop windows, painting golden bars across the wooden floor. Dust motes swirled in the beams like tiny constellations. Eli ran his hand across the worn leather cover of the ledger, now back on the cluttered workbench where they had first opened it.

He exhaled slowly. “We were so focused on the obvious before—dates, names, totals. But Sage was right. We weren’t asking the right questions.”

Kate leaned over his shoulder, her eyes scanning the columns. “It’s not just what’s written—it’s how it’s written. Sage said to look for what doesn’t belong.”

Eli flipped carefully to the pages they had bookmarked days earlier—entries dated between 1892 and 1894. His finger trailed down the neat rows of inked handwriting, the elegant cursive so consistent it might have been printed by machine.

Until it wasn’t.

“There,” Kate said, tapping the page.

Halfway down the ledger, nestled between two entries for livestock feed and tin roofing, was a single line that stood out—not just because the handwriting had changed, but because the ink had faded into a reddish-brown hue, like rust or dried blood.

"Ash falls where memory lingers. 38°39′22″N, 86°53′40″W. Keepers know."

They stared at the words. Eli read them aloud, slowly.

Kate’s brow furrowed. “Coordinates. That’s definitely what that is.”

Eli stood and walked over to the laptop perched awkwardly atop a stack of books. He typed the numbers into a mapping program. The screen refreshed.

“It’s… Martin County,” he said, eyes narrowing. “Near the Hoosier National Forest. That’s maybe twenty miles from here. Pretty remote. Almost nothing around it except woods and a few trails.”

Kate crossed her arms. “And what’s this about ‘Ash falls where memory lingers’? Sounds like a riddle.”

Eli turned the book toward the window, angling it in the light. The red-tinged ink shimmered slightly in the low sun, revealing faint smudges, like someone had written it with a shaky hand—or while emotional.

“Look at this,” he whispered. Below the coordinates, barely legible, were the initials E.A. The same ones they had found carved into the stone at the cemetery.

“Elijah Arvin,” Kate said. “He’s leading us.”

Eli didn’t respond right away. He was staring at the page, but his mind was drifting—hearing wind in the trees, fire crackling, and somewhere in that place between memory and imagination, the soft flutter of a white feather.

“What if the ash,” he said slowly, “is literal?”

Kate looked at him, puzzled.

“There was a fire,” he said, turning. “Sage mentioned it in passing. A fire in those woods, long ago. Burned through homesteads that aren’t even on modern maps.”

Kate pulled out her phone, typing rapidly. “It was 1911,” she said, eyes scanning the article. “Forest fire near Hindostan Falls. Several homes destroyed. No official records of who lived there… but some sources mention cabins, smokehouses, maybe even an old trading post. That could be where we’re headed.”

Eli nodded, already reaching for his jacket. “Then let’s get there before sundown.”

As they packed the ledger carefully into a canvas satchel, the workshop grew quiet. Outside, a crow called sharply from the trees, as if sounding an alarm. Kate paused, hand on the door.

“What do you think it means—‘Keepers know’?”

Eli adjusted the strap on his shoulder. “I don’t know. But I have a feeling we’re about to meet one.”

They stepped out into the fading light, unaware that a figure stood just out of view down the road, watching them from behind the trunk of a sycamore tree. Waiting.

The Fifth Mark - Chapter 6: The Stranger Beneath the Sycamore

 

They didn’t speak as they walked back to the truck. The silence wasn’t awkward—it was thick with thought. Eli clutched the journal to his chest like it might disappear, while Kate kept looking back toward the cemetery, as if the feather might float up again and beckon her to return.

The sun had dropped low by the time they reached the field where the truck was parked. A long shadow stretched out from the stand of sycamores by the fence line. Eli stopped cold.

"Someone’s there."

Kate followed his gaze. A figure—tall, lean, and still—stood under the largest sycamore. Dressed in what looked like a brown duster and wide-brimmed hat, the figure leaned on a crooked walking stick. He raised a hand—not a wave, just a slow gesture of acknowledgment.

"You know him?" Kate asked.

"No. But he knows we’re not just here for a hike," Eli muttered.

They approached slowly.

“Evening,” Eli called out.

“Evenin’,” the man answered, voice as coarse as bark but calm.

Up close, his face was lined with age but sharp with alertness. A pair of pale blue eyes studied them beneath the brim of his hat. His walking stick, Eli noticed, wasn’t just a stick—it was carved with markings. Spirals, birds, and… a small five-pointed star near the top.

“You been pokin’ around the Arvin place,” the man said, not accusingly—just stating a fact.

“We didn’t mean any harm,” Kate said. “Just… following a clue.”

The man nodded, as if that made perfect sense. “Ain’t many folks followin’ clues these days. Most are too busy followin’ trouble.”

Eli cleared his throat. “Do you know anything about E. Arvin?”

The man tapped the walking stick lightly on the ground. “Elias Arvin. Born 1785. War of 1812 veteran. Settled these hills when there was more bear than man. Left behind more than land and bones.”

Kate stepped forward. “Do you know what this is?” She opened the ledger.

The man’s eyes lit up. “Been a long time since I seen that.”

“You’ve seen it?” Eli asked.

The man nodded. “Not that one, but one like it. There were five.”

“Five ledgers?” Kate said.

“Five Marks,” the man corrected. “Five stories. Five places. Five truths.”

Eli opened his mouth, but nothing came out.

“You’re on the right path,” the man said. “But you best be careful. The past don’t like to stay buried forever. And some folks don’t like it dug up.”

Kate looked him square in the eye. “Who are you?”

He smiled. “Some call me Sage. Been watchin’ over this patch of earth for longer than I can rightly count. I walk it, listen to it. Make sure the wrong folks don’t get the right answers.”

“And are we the right folks?” Eli asked.

“That’s up to you,” Sage said. “But the next mark lies where the river bends around the old millstone. You’ll find a box buried beneath a lightning-blasted oak.”

Before they could ask anything else, he turned and walked into the trees. No sound of snapping twigs. No rustle. Just gone.

Eli looked at Kate.

Kate looked at Eli.

Then both turned and stared at the ledger, the feather, and the fading sun.

Whatever they had started, it was bigger than the two of them. And it was far from over.

The Fifth Mark - Chapter Five: Names in Stone

 

The morning mist still clung to the low places as Eli steered his old truck down a narrow gravel road that snaked along the edge of a wooded rise. Kate rode silently beside him, flipping through the worn pages of the journal they’d found in the attic. Neither had much to say—both were too wrapped up in what they might find ahead.

“Do you think he’s actually buried there?” Kate finally asked, glancing up.

“If Elias Arvin died in Martin County like the ledger suggests, this is the most likely place,” Eli replied, tapping the steering wheel with his thumb. “This cemetery’s old. Some of the stones go back before the Civil War. It’s where most of the early settlers in this part of the county ended up.”

They pulled into the edge of Brush Creek Cemetery, a modest patch of ground surrounded by low stone walls and shaded by ancient hackberry and walnut trees. A crooked wooden sign leaned on rusted metal stakes. Someone had painted it long ago in faded white letters: Brush Creek—Established 1811.

The place was quiet except for the wind in the trees and the low creak of the gate as Eli pushed it open.

Kate followed, clutching her canvas bag like a satchel of secrets. Inside were the journal, the strange map from the ledger, and a printout she’d made of an old land patent. “According to this,” she said, holding the paper up, “Elias received a land grant for his service in the War of 1812. He had to be buried nearby. He wasn’t the type to leave things unfinished.”

They split up and walked among the stones, many leaning at angles, covered in lichen or barely legible. Eli ran his hand along one of them, brushing away moss.

“Anything?” Kate called.

Eli shook his head. “Just a Margaret and a baby named Samuel. Died 1837.”

Kate squinted at a marker shaped like an obelisk. “This one’s got an ‘E. A.’ on it—but it’s not our guy. Emma Annabelle, 1860.”

Minutes passed. The sky began to brighten. Birds stirred overhead.

Then, near the edge of the plot where brush had begun to reclaim ground, Eli stopped cold. He looked down.

“Katherine…” he said, unusually formal.

She walked over, saw the stone he was pointing to, and drew in a breath.

The slab was simple and broken across the top. Someone had etched only a few words:

E. Arvin
Soldier – Surveyor – Storyteller
The land remembers.

Kate knelt beside it, her fingers brushing dirt from the base.

“That last line,” she whispered. “The land remembers. That was in the journal. It’s written more than once.”

Eli nodded. “And the title on the journal’s cover—Notes for Those Who Listen.”

Kate stood and pulled out the map again, now with newly penciled notations. “We’ve been looking for a cipher. But maybe it’s more than that. Maybe it’s not just about decoding words. Maybe it’s about reading the land itself.”

Eli turned slowly, looking past the cemetery into the surrounding woods and gentle hills beyond. “You think it’s a map you follow with your feet?”

“Or your senses,” Kate replied. “He was a surveyor. He didn’t just make maps—he lived them. Maybe each marker, each story, leads to another.”

They stood in silence for a moment.

Then a breeze rustled the grass, and a single white feather drifted down from above, spinning gently until it landed at the base of the broken stone.

Neither of them spoke.

The Fifth Mark - Chapter 4 – Scraps and Shadows

 

Eli sat cross-legged on the floor of the study—once his grandfather’s, later Uncle Ray’s—a room steeped in quiet obsession and pipe smoke. Generations of Turners had pored over maps and journals here, though none, he suspected, with quite the same intensity as Uncle Ray. The old desk still bore faint rings from Ray’s favorite coffee mug. Above it, a dusty antler mount kept solemn watch.

Across from him, Kate Landers knelt beside a box labeled Clippings & Oddities. She gingerly pulled out a brittle sheet of paper, squinting at the faded ink. “This one’s a recipe for sorghum cookies,” she said. “Unless ‘use before the harvest moon’ is some kind of code.”

Eli chuckled. “If it is, then my Uncle Ray was a cryptic baker.”

Kate smirked. “Wouldn’t be the weirdest thing we’ve found so far.”

They were three days into their self-appointed quest—part historical investigation, part treasure hunt. Since discovering the ledger and the marked map, they’d been combing through Ray’s lifetime of notes, looking for patterns. So far, they’d uncovered references to five “marks” supposedly created by Elias Arvin in 1836—four with potential location clues, and one called simply “The Fifth Mark,” hinted at as the key to everything else.

Eli slid a large, brittle scrapbook across the floor and opened to the back cover. Tucked inside was a 1910 township map of the area. Faint pencil dots formed a triangle west of the East Fork of the White River.

“There,” Kate said, leaning in. “That triangle—three dots. If we fold it just so…” She carefully creased the page. “They converge near a patch of land with no label.”

Eli nodded. “Ray used to talk about that area. Said it was too unstable to build—sinkholes, soft ground. But maybe Elias saw that as protection.”

Kate flipped through the ledger again and pointed to a margin note:
“Three bends beyond the bluff, the white oak leans with time. There, the compass sings true.”

“Poetic,” Eli said. “But frustratingly vague.”

“I don’t think it’s just vague,” Kate replied. “I think it’s layered. He was hiding something, but also leaving a trail.”

There was a pause. Then Kate asked, “You mentioned photo albums in the attic, right?”

Eli sighed. “Yep. And plenty of spiders.”

She stood up, brushing dust from her jeans. “I’ll grab the flashlight. You bring courage.”

---

Scene Two – The Attic Archive

The attic door groaned as Eli pulled it down, and the wooden steps creaked with reluctant age. A single bulb hung from the rafter like a hesitant moon. Dust hung thick in the air.

Kate waved her flashlight beam across trunks, boxes, and stacks of old furniture under canvas sheets. “This looks like a time capsule exploded.”

They opened a steamer trunk lined with quilts and family papers. A faded photo album sat near the top, its leather binding cracked but intact. Kate opened it carefully.

“Turner Family Reunion, 1917,” she read aloud from a hand-lettered caption. The photos showed mustached men and bonneted women standing stiffly in front of porches, wagons, and what looked like an early church building.

Then she turned to a sepia image that caught Eli’s eye—a log cabin beside a bluff, with the river barely visible behind it.

He leaned closer. “That might be the original Arvin homestead.”

Kate flipped it over. In elegant cursive:
“West of the bluff, before the flood took the south field.”
A penciled date read 1894.

Eli rubbed the back of his neck. “That confirms the bluff location. If we can find the remains of that homestead…”

Kate paused. A smaller photograph had slipped loose and landed on the floorboards. She picked it up—heavier paper, sharper image, darkened with age. It showed a solitary man standing beside a moss-covered stone, broad-shouldered and still.

Etched faintly on the bottom: E.A.

Kate handed it to Eli without a word.

They both stared.

“I think,” she said softly, “we just found our next step.”

Eli nodded, his voice barely above a whisper. “It’s time to follow the marks.”

The Fifth Mark - Chapter 3 – Clues in the Ledger

Eli Turner had always told himself that once he retired, he’d finally spend time digging into his family’s history. He'd bought genealogy books over the years, scribbled names on scraps of paper, and saved articles in folders with good intentions—but life, work, and responsibilities always seemed to push the past to the back burner.

Now that he was back in Martin County—really back—he found the past had been waiting for him.

He’d inherited the old house after his Uncle Ray passed, a modest clapboard home nestled near the woods, just a few miles from where Eli had grown up. In fact, he'd lived in this very house once as a boy. After his parents died unexpectedly, he’d come to live with Uncle Will, who had raised him more like a quiet guardian than a father figure.

So when Eli returned after retirement, stepping over the threshold of the house again after all those years, it didn’t feel new. It felt like picking up a conversation that had paused decades earlier.

He had spent the last couple of weeks sorting through Will’s belongings, which had a way of stirring old memories. One item, though, had escaped notice until tonight: a cedar chest tucked into the back corner of the bedroom closet. It had been there for as long as Eli could remember. The smell of cedar was still sharp when he opened it, mixed with the faint scent of time.

Inside the chest—beneath a few wool blankets and a cracked photograph album—was a slim, black leather-bound ledger.

He ran his fingers over the worn cover and opened it carefully. On the inside cover, written in precise 19th-century script, were the words:

Elias Arvin – 1836

Eli sat back in the wooden chair beside the bed, the room quiet but humming with possibility.

The pages of the ledger were filled with methodical entries: livestock tallies, grain trades, hand-drawn measurements of fences and planting rows. But sprinkled between the farm records were stranger notations:

“Mark placed. Third ridge beyond east spring.”
“Triangle same as first. Stone aligned.”
“Fifth mark—stone face. Same sign carved. Three dots below. Feathers placed.”

Eli read the lines twice, then a third time. Fifth mark? Could the stone he’d found in the woods—marked with a triangle, slash, and three dots—really be part of something larger?

He flipped to the back of the ledger and found more clues written in the same neat hand:

“North wall cave holds ledger.”
“Trace west beyond black oak.”
“Keep to the high ground when rain comes.”

The ledger was part record book, part code.

He stood and crossed the room to his desk, where a weathered county map from the 1830s was pinned above a corkboard. He traced the Buffalo Trace line with his finger, his mind trying to overlay the past onto the present.

Then he opened his own journal and began to write:

“This was Elias’ book. Not just a farmer’s ledger, but something more. A record of hidden marks—five, at least. The stone I found must be the fifth. But what are they marking? A trail? A warning? Or a secret? I need to find the others.”

As the sun dipped below the trees outside the bedroom window, Eli sat quietly for a moment and looked at the open chest. This house, this land, his family—it was all tangled together now.

Whatever Elias Arvin had left behind, it was meant for someone to find.

And Eli Turner had come home at just the right time.

The Fifth Mark - Chapter 2: Into the Woods

 Kate Lander was the kind of person who traveled light—mentally and physically. But as she climbed into Eli Turner’s old Jeep that morning, her mind felt heavy with questions. The map they had found two days earlier lay folded neatly in her backpack, but it might as well have been carved into her thoughts. That symbol—an inverted triangle with three dots and a slash—was etched into her brain as vividly as if she’d dreamed it.

Eli, on the other hand, was silent behind the wheel. His fingers gripped the steering wheel like he was back in uniform, driving to some fire tower that needed inspection. The retired ranger in him was alert again. He hadn’t said much since she showed him the map, but Kate knew his wheels were turning.

“You think we’ll find anything?” she asked, breaking the silence.

Eli shrugged. “We’ll find trees, bugs, and maybe a patch of poison ivy. Beyond that? No promises.”

They drove south past the edges of Dover Hill, where the rolling fields gave way to hardwood forest. At a sharp bend, Eli pulled off the county road onto a rutted gravel path, one only locals or deer seemed to know.

“This is about as close as we can get by vehicle,” he said. “We’ll hike in from here.”

They walked in single file at first, following an overgrown trail that hadn’t seen a boot print in years. Kate ducked under a low-hanging oak branch and stopped when she spotted a rusted fence post.

“This area looks like it hasn’t been touched in decades,” she whispered.

Eli nodded. “Some of these woods haven’t changed much in a hundred years. That’s why I liked them.”

After an hour of careful bushwhacking, checking the map and compass every few yards, they reached a small rise where the forest floor gave way to a mossy clearing surrounded by large, weathered stones.

“This is it,” Eli said. “The topographic lines on the map match this ridge.”

Kate scanned the ground. “You feel that?”

Eli looked at her, puzzled. “Feel what?”

“I don’t know… like something’s off. Like we’re being watched.”

He crouched and brushed moss from the largest stone. There it was—faint, but visible. The same mark. An inverted triangle with a slash down the middle and three dots beneath it.

Kate let out a slow breath. “So it’s real.”

“Yeah,” Eli muttered. “But why now? Why here? And why add a mark that wasn’t on the first four ciphers?”

Before she could answer, the wind kicked up. A whisper, almost a word, rustled through the trees.

Then they heard it—a distant crack, like a branch breaking under weight.

Eli stood up, scanning the woods. “We’re not alone.”

Kate took a step back. “Maybe it’s just a deer.”

Eli didn’t move. “Let’s assume it isn’t.”

Suddenly, something fluttered down from the trees. A feather—white, but tipped in black—landed between them. Eli bent down to pick it up. As he did, he noticed something else etched faintly into the side of the stone, barely visible in the lichen. It wasn’t just a symbol.

It was a name.

Kate leaned in. “What does it say?”

Eli traced the letters. “E. Arvin.”

Kate’s eyes went wide. “As in Elias Arvin?”

Eli nodded slowly. “Maybe not just a map, Kate. Maybe this whole thing is a message… or a warning.”

The Fifth Mark - Chapter 1: The Map Resurfaces

 

The morning had the kind of soft stillness Eli Turner had come to appreciate in retirement. The kind where the only sound was the distant murmur of Indian Creek winding its way through the valley, and the occasional rustle of leaves as the breeze threaded its fingers through the oaks and sycamores. He’d been on the porch since dawn, a chipped enamel mug of black coffee cooling on the rail beside him, the sun casting long gold beams through the thinning autumn trees.

He hadn’t heard a car pull up. That was the first thing he noticed.

The second was the sharp rap of knuckles against his screen door.

“Eli?” came a familiar voice. “You home?”

Eli set his coffee down, rising slowly. His knees, once mountain-strong, had softened with time. But his mind—his mind was still sharp. Especially when it came to the woman standing on his porch.

“Kate,” he said, opening the door with a small smile. “Wasn’t expecting company this early.”

Kate Lander returned the smile, but there was a tension behind her eyes. She was dressed in her usual way—jeans, hiking boots, hair pulled back loosely—but something about the way she held the worn leather satchel slung over her shoulder told him this wasn’t a social visit.

“Mind if I come in?” she asked.

“Of course.”

They settled into the worn chairs inside, the familiar creak of the old floorboards under their feet. The air smelled faintly of pine and wood smoke. Eli poured her a cup of coffee without asking, then leaned back, waiting. He’d learned, long ago, that Kate would speak when she was ready.

“It’s about the ciphers,” she said finally, her voice quiet but steady.

That was enough to make him straighten. He hadn’t heard that word in weeks. Not since they’d sealed the last chamber near Dover Hill. Not since they’d agreed—wordlessly—that whatever strange chapter of their lives that had been, it was over.

Kate reached into the satchel and pulled out a folded, brittle sheet of yellowed paper. She set it carefully on the table and smoothed it flat.

Eli leaned forward. “What am I looking at?”

“Library archives,” she murmured. “I was researching for the local history class when I came across this tucked inside an old land survey. It looked familiar, so I brought it home.”

The map was hand-drawn, the kind made with ink and trembling lines—likely by a surveyor or frontiersman. But what caught Eli’s breath short was the mark in the lower right quadrant.

An inverted triangle. Three dots above it.

The cipher.

But this one was different. Smaller. Fainter. And it sat over a location deep in the woods near Indian Creek—a place neither of them had ever explored.

“That’s a fifth mark,” Eli murmured, voice low.

Kate nodded. “I checked. This isn’t one of the four we found last time. I cross-referenced old plat maps, land deeds, geological surveys. This one hasn’t been disturbed. Not yet.”

Eli felt the weight settle into his chest. That familiar pull—half dread, half duty.

“You sure you want to chase this?” he asked gently. “We agreed to let sleeping dogs lie.”

She hesitated. Then: “I thought so too. Until I started hearing things. The forest near this spot? Wildlife’s gone quiet. The ground’s been shaking—small tremors. And then this map shows up, like it was meant to be found.”

She met his eyes.

“I don’t think it’s over, Eli.”

For a long moment, neither of them spoke. The house groaned softly in the morning heat. Somewhere in the trees, a single crow called.

Finally, Eli sighed. He reached for the map and folded it carefully.

“Let me grab my boots.”

The Fifth Mark - Prologue: The Warning

 

Martin County, Indiana—1863

The forest was on fire.

Not with flames, but with light—pale, unnatural light that spilled between the blackened trunks of ancient sycamores and maples. The air itself hummed, the ground pulsed as though the bones of the earth were shifting beneath their feet.

They worked in silence, the five of them—three men, two women—faces streaked with dirt, blood, and something older than either. The sky above the ridgeline boiled violet and gold, an unnatural aurora that had no place in southern Indiana.

The youngest—a boy no older than twelve—watched wide-eyed as the last of the great stones was pushed into place. He clutched a carved talisman in both hands, fingers raw from hours of labor. Beside him, an elder Lenape woman traced symbols into the wet earth with a twisted branch. Her lips moved soundlessly, chanting words in a tongue so old even she no longer knew their meaning.

The others—settlers in ragged Union blues and homespun—had dropped to their knees, exhausted and pale. One of them, a bearded man with a splintered rifle slung over his back, muttered, “We shouldn't have come here.”

The elder finished her work. Slowly, deliberately, she rose and took the boy’s trembling hands in her own. She pressed the talisman—stone carved with five intersecting marks—into the soft clay at the center of the ring of stones.

The wind died.

The light flickered once. Twice. Then vanished, as if it had never been.

Only darkness remained, and the scent of damp earth and burning leaves.

The elder whispered in the boy’s ear, her voice barely more than breath:
“Some things are not meant to be remembered.”

And with that, they buried the mark.
And with it, the warning.

The Fifth Mark - A Martin County Mystery — Book Two

 

Premise:

Weeks after sealing an ancient artifact beneath the hills of Dover Hill, retired ranger Eli Turner and history teacher Kate Lander are ready to put the past behind them. But when a newly uncovered fifth cipher mark appears on a forgotten map—located deep in the woods near Indian Creek—they realize their journey isn’t over. It’s only just begun.

As strange geological tremors ripple across the region and local wildlife vanishes from areas near the new site, Kate and Eli are pulled back into a mystery older and darker than the Civil War secrets they thought they'd put to rest. The fifth mark doesn't lead to treasure—it leads to something buried before history was written.

Tracked once again by Ryland and the American Sovereign Trust—now more desperate and dangerous—Eli and Kate must decode a new set of symbols, navigate a hidden cave system beneath the Martin County hills, and confront the possibility that what lies below isn’t just ancient...

…it’s alive.

Set against the haunting landscapes of southern Indiana, The Fifth Mark is a story of forgotten knowledge, enduring guardianship, and the thin boundary between what was meant to be remembered—and what was meant to be sealed away forever.

 

The Jug Rock Cipher - Epilogue: The Map That Wasn't Burned

 

Three Weeks Later – Shoals Library Archive Room

The winter wind rattled the old windows as Kate sorted through a new box of documents donated by a descendant of one of the early Dover Hill families.

Most of it was routine—birth ledgers, land receipts, pressed flowers yellowed with age. But at the bottom of the box, wrapped in a sheet of oilskin, she found a folded bundle of papers.

A single sheet caught her eye.

A hand-drawn map.

Old. Early 1800s.

The markings were familiar.

Jug Rock. The Bluff. Hindostan. Dover Hill.

But this map had something Ray’s never did.

A fifth mark.

No label.

Just a symbol in the forested hills southeast of Shoals.

A triangle—right side up.

And beneath it, a word written in faded ink:

"Listening."

---

Meanwhile – Somewhere in the Woods Near Indian Creek

A hiker found the stone by accident.

It wasn’t on the trail.

He’d followed a deer path, slipped on wet leaves, and rolled into a ravine. When he stood up, there it was—partially exposed in the earth. Smooth. Carved.

The triangle. Three dots.

And a deep groove in the rock, warm to the touch, though the air was bitter cold.

As he stared at it, unsure whether to call the DNR or post it online, he heard something—soft and low.

Not the wind.

A hum.

As if the ground itself remembered a song.

The Jug Rock Cipher - Chapter Fourteen: The Weight of Silence

Dover Hill Ridge – Later That Day

The wind had stilled.

The light across the clearing had taken on that golden hush you only get in late autumn—soft, slanting, more memory than sunlight.

Ryland was gone.

No words. No parting threat. Just a long, haunted stare before he and his men retreated into the trees. Not defeated—disarmed. Like the ground itself had warned him.

Kate and I sat in the center of the circle for a long time, watching the shadows stretch across the mounds.

“I thought he was going to shoot,” she finally said.

“So did I.”

We didn’t say anything else for a while.

The box was still there—nestled inside the stone hollow behind the upside-down triangle. The light it had emitted was gone now. Just a faint warmth left behind, like the last breath of a campfire.

I stood and walked a slow circle around the site.

No animals. No birds. Just wind through dry leaves, the sound of things resuming after holding their breath.

Kate dusted her hands on her jeans.

“What do we tell people?” she asked.

I smiled. “About what? That we found an ancient pre-Columbian cipher used to contain an artifact no one understands? That a pseudo-historian with a camo jacket and a God complex tried to hijack the mystery for his private cult?”

She laughed softly. “Yeah. That might not go over too well at the next town meeting.”

We packed up what little gear we had, took one last look at the mound, and made our way back to the truck.

---

Shoals – That Night

Back at Uncle Ray’s house, I sat in his old chair by the window and looked through his journal one more time.

Tucked into the final page was a Polaroid I’d missed before.

It was old—grainy and washed out. But I recognized the scene instantly.

The mound. The stone. The triangle.

And a handwritten note beneath it, in Ray’s looping script:

“If you're reading this, then the cipher has been passed on. Just remember, Eli—some truths aren't buried. They're waiting.”

I closed the journal.

Kate was in the kitchen, making coffee like we’d been doing this together for years. Like she’d always been part of this story.

And maybe she had.

Maybe we both had.

Because this wasn’t just about treasure.

It never was.

It was about who listens, and who acts when they hear the call.

The Jug Rock Cipher - Chapter Thirteen: The Seal Is Not Yours

 Dover Hill Ridge – Minutes Later

Kate froze.

I turned toward the ridge’s edge, the sound of boots crunching leaves unmistakable now.

Ryland appeared first, then Brenner, both armed and confident. Mason followed at a distance, filming.

“Didn’t I say this wasn’t over?” Ryland called out, his tone light, but tight with threat.

He stepped down into the circle like he owned it—like centuries of forgotten earth meant nothing to him. The ancient mound creaked beneath his weight.

I stood in front of the stone slab, the backpack still slung over my shoulder.

“You’re too late,” I said.

He smiled. “Eli, come on. You’re a smart man. You don’t even know what you’re carrying.”

Kate stepped beside me. “We know enough. We know it was meant to stay buried.”

Ryland shook his head. “You think burying it again solves anything? Do you really believe you can stop what’s coming with silence and shovels?”

Brenner raised his rifle slightly—not aimed, not yet, but enough.

“We’re not here to kill anyone,” Ryland said. “But that box belongs to something much bigger than you. Than me. Than this town.”

I unslung the backpack slowly and set it on the grass behind me.

“You’re right,” I said. “It’s bigger. That’s why it needs to stay here.”

Ryland took a step closer. “Don’t do this. You don’t even know what’s inside.”

Then Kate did something unexpected.

She reached into the backpack and pulled out the chest. The wax was gone. The inscription—Bound. Not Broken.—glinted in the pale morning light.

She held it out like a question.

“Then let’s all find out.”

Ryland hesitated.

And in that instant, Kate turned—not toward him, but toward the stone slab.

She dropped to her knees and began to fit the box down into the depression behind the upside-down triangle. A perfect fit.

Ryland lunged forward.

I stepped between them, raising my arms, just as the box clicked into place with a deep, dull thrum—a sound that came from beneath the ground.

Ryland stopped dead.

Even Brenner lowered his rifle.

The wind picked up suddenly, but only within the circle. Leaves swirled in a rising spiral. The trees around us seemed to lean inward.

The stone slab beneath the box glowed faintly, veins of amber light threading across the surface like lightning frozen in rock.

Kate stood slowly.

She spoke—not to Ryland, not to me.

But to the earth itself.

“It’s done.”

Ryland looked shaken now. Not angry.

Afraid.

“What did you do?” he whispered.

We didn’t answer.

Because the truth was—we didn’t know.

Only that it had been waiting to be sealed again.

And we had heard the call.

The Jug Rock Cipher - Chapter Twelve: Beneath the Hill

 Dover Hill Ridge – Next Morning

The frost was already melting when we returned to the clearing.

The air was still, but not quiet.

Birds weren’t singing.

Even the wind, which usually hummed through the pines, seemed to pause at the edge of the ridge.

Kate and I followed an old deer trail deeper into the woods behind the split oak, using a scanned copy of an 1819 land survey map Preacher Tom had given us. It showed something—barely—a ring of mounds nestled into a crescent of limestone outcrops about a half mile south of the oak.

“It was labeled as ‘field irregularities’ on the old map,” Kate said, holding the tablet, “but Preacher Tom thinks it was a ceremonial site. He said most of them were destroyed by farming in the early 1900s.”

We crested a rise—and stopped.

Below us was a shallow depression in the earth. Nothing dramatic. Just a circle of low rises, now overgrown with grass and spindly cedar trees. But the shape was unmistakable: intentional. Deliberate.

We stood there for a moment, staring down.

Then the ground beneath us shifted—not with movement, but with meaning.

I could feel it in my bones.

Kate walked into the center of the ring and turned slowly. “Ray was trying to tell us that this box... this object... wasn’t buried to be found. It was returned to where it came from.”

I stepped beside her.

The box in my backpack grew heavier. The air around us felt denser.

We knelt, clearing moss from one of the mounds. Beneath it, half-buried in roots and limestone chips, we found a smooth, flat stone—different from the local geology. It had been placed there. Set.

Carved into it was a now-familiar symbol: the triangle with three dots.

But this time, the triangle was upside down.

A warning?

Kate whispered, “This isn’t just a cipher. It’s a seal.”

Then I heard it.

A branch cracking.

Not from us.

From above the ridge.

I turned—but saw no one.

Still, I knew.

We weren’t alone.

And whatever we had uncovered—whatever we were about to disturb—was no longer just ours to decide.