Read Novel 1987 - The Haunted Mesa (v5.0) for Free Online Page B

everyday. Not for more than a week have I enjoyed a decent night’s sleep.
    All morning I struggled to recall what I had heard about other dimensions, parallel worlds and their possibilities. I could remember nothing definite and began to realize how such specialization as mine could be sadly limiting.
    Mike Raglan put down the daybook and walked again to the window. Erik Hokart was not a man given to wild flights of imagination. He was an acknowledged authority in several aspects of electronics, as well as having considerable business acumen. His foresight and his patents had earned him a considerable fortune, all based upon simple logic.
    He was not the sort of man to overlook much of anything, and not likely to be tricked. The nearest town was, Mike believed, not closer than eighty or ninety miles, and nobody lived in the vicinity. South of the river there were a couple of trading posts, and some scattered Navajos, but they were a people who minded their own affairs.
    So what was happening? Hokart evidently had begun to believe in the existence of a parallel world of some sort, and whatever was going on was important enough to someone to send a goon after Hokart’s daybook.
    Where was Erik? Who was the girl who delivered the book? And who was the man who came to retrieve it? What of the kiva?
    â€œI’d better get out there,” Mike Raglan said, speaking aloud. “I’d better get right to the spot. If Erik is not there…”
    He spread out a map of the Four Corners area and studied possible routes. Getting to where Hokart was constructing his home was not easy. It was remote country, and although the roads were generally good most of them were unsurfaced. There was no road leading right to Hokart’s place, which was one of the attractions for him. He enjoyed being alone.
    Erik had, Mike knew, planned on coming and going by helicopter, at least during the construction phases. What materials he would need would be delivered by the same means.
    He remembered Erik’s discovery of the mesa. He had been flying low over the area when he saw that flat-topped mesa, different from any around it. The top gave the appearance of having once been cultivated, but long ago. The position, the view in all directions, the isolation of it had immediately seized his attention. From that moment Erik Hokart had thought of no other place. “I can use the native rock,” he had said. “There’s plenty of good building material around the base of the cliff.”
    Time was no object and he had resolved to build it himself, as he wished.
    Erik had always been one to do things his own way, but this time he had run into something totally unfamiliar, something for which he was not prepared.
    Uneasily, Mike ran over the events in his mind. Erik had no friends who were inclined to practical jokes, nor was there anyplace close around where anybody could stay unless willing to camp out under rigorous conditions.
    Slowly, thinking all the while, Mike Raglan began putting his gear together. To what he had already assembled he added binoculars. Yet he found himself curiously reluctant to leave Tamarron, knowing that once he returned to the area of Hokart’s house he was committed.
    For nearly twenty years he had been investigating mysteries, exposing frauds, venturing into little-known areas of thought, yet this time he felt he was walking on the brink of something to be feared. This was truly the unknown.
    Yet why should he feel that way? What evidence did he have?
    Sitting down, he wrote a careful outline of what had transpired and what he was about to do. If anything happened to him there must be a record, some evidence he could leave behind. He had a feeling he was going off the deep end. He would leave his notes with the daybook, and leave them in a safe place.
    He took up the daybook again.

    Was I afraid? Nothing fearsome had happened, yet I was dealing with the unknown, with a whole new set of