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The Time Eater – a quick description:

What secrets lie buried in the heart of a forgotten valley?

When Foster Raymond’s grandfather, a famous paleontologist, dies mysteriously, Foster discovers clues that point to a groundbreaking fossil hidden in a remote valley. Driven to uncover the truth and secure his grandfather’s legacy, Foster and his friends embark on a dangerous quest to find the fossil. But a ruthless rival, the Time Eater, wants the fossil for himself and will stop at nothing to get it. As a dangerous storm closes in, Foster must race against time to outsmart the Time Eater and protect the secrets of the past.

Check out a sample from The Time Eater novel

PART 1: The Hidden Museum

 Chapter 1

12,000 years ago, an Ice Age river cut a deep gorge through what is now the center of my city. The churning white water that still rushes along the base of the valley gave the police an easy explanation for the dead body that washed ashore two weeks ago.

But they were wrong about what had happened.

They won’t listen to me. I’m just some kid—what would I know about forensics? About death? Sure, maybe I’m only thirteen, but I bet I’ve got more experience hunting fossils and examining the dead than any of them.

I knew the man they found in that river. He was my grandfather. And I know what happened to him was no accident

It was raining that day. Just like today. The river was high–but there were still those rocks that jutted from the middle of the choppy flow. And that’s where they’d found him.

I shut down that image. I couldn’t … didn’t want to picture him … in the cold, in the water, on the slippery rocks. Not moving ….

And the police, they said he’d slipped. Hit his head. And it was all just a terrible accident. It was terrible, for sure. But no. Not an accident. He’d spent his entire life in the field. The best paleontologist of his generation. Digging. Surviving deserts. Jungles. Floods. And worse.

My granddad didn’t slip on anything just out of the blue. Storm or not.

It had nothing to do with getting caught out in the wilds in that storm. I knew it was murder—and the proof was waiting behind the rotting chain-link fence in front of me.

On the other side of the wire—in this weird, restricted area on the valley floor, fenced off from the rest of the already remote and abandoned wilds—a broken slab of concrete roof jutted from the heavily wooded hillside. In the half-light this deep in the forest, I could see, under the overhang, a graffitied concrete wall inset with a rusted steel door.

The door to the abandoned tunnels.

I jerked up a flap of chain link someone had cut to create a makeshift entrance in the fence, waving my dog, Leakey, and friend, Steve to follow me through.

Steve kicked at a piece of rubble, sending raindrops flying off his high-tech Gore-Tex pants. He pointed at the ancient trees that had fallen on top of the decrepit roof. Boulders and slides of wet earth had piled around the old entryway. “Meeting this woman is a spectacularly bad idea,” he said without taking is eyes off the ancient metal door with the broken lock hanging off it. “Dangerous. Dangerous. Dangerous.”

I knew what he thought. I’d heard it all before—about the danger, and the low odds of finding proof, and how my murder idea was absurd.

Still, here he was. At my side. And, after what he’d been through, I knew that breaking into these tunnels to confront a stranger and whatever else lurked in there couldn’t be anywhere near the top of his To Do list.

I had to hand it to him, he was a good friend. Maybe better than I deserved.

“Chins up,” I said, ducking through the gap in the fence. “Leakey has our back. C’mon, big man, you’re not going to leave me hanging, right?” The paleontology tools in my belt banged off a fence post as Leakey, all 180lbs of rain-sodden Newfoundland Retriever, leaned against my leg, his head swivelling, sweeping the misty air like radar. Alert for danger signals only he could hear or smell.

Heavy black fur rustled against my leg as he looked up at me, eyes narrowing as he studied my face. Squinting, as if to ask, “Are you sure about this? Really?  Because, in the history of all your bad ideas, the really brainless ones, this may be your worst.”

Actually, that voice might have been more mine than his. It was the worrying one. The rational one in my head. The one I didn’t much listen to anymore.

Not since Granddad died.

I rattled the chain link at Steve. “Come on. This is our best lead yet.”

 “You’d believe a woman who squats in abandoned tunnels?” He waved me away with his right hand, the one that had only two fingers on it. “You’ll trust a woman you’ve never met? Trust her over the police? Over facts? Evidence?”

Leakey pawed at the mud between us. Just as doubtful as Steve.

“Look, we have to hurry.” I shook the chain link harder. “She won’t wait forever.”

I reached for Steve’s arm. “I need your help. These tunnels are supposed to be a maze. You’re the mapmaker. The explorer ….”

“These tunnels have been abandoned for forty years. They’re a death trap,” he said, jabbing his thumb at a handwritten sign hanging from the open door of an electrical junction box beside the door. “Not only will this kill you. It will hurt the whole time you are dying.”

 “You’ve been with me every step of the way,” I said. “We’ve faced danger before. What’s really eating you?”

He didn’t answer. Didn’t move. His face contorted, like he was in pain, like things were banging together in his head. As if someone had just thrown him an algebra problem. A hard one.

“C’mon.” I hauled on the shoulder of Steve’s jacket, trying to pull him through the fence. “Have some faith, man. We’re a team ….”

Steve shrugged away from my hand.

Then his head dropped, and he sighed. “This is going to end badly,” he said as he ducked through the hole in the fence.

*

We pushed through the broken steel door and stepped into a dark tunnel. Word was, long ago it had been a last-ditch exit from the subway system in case of transit catastrophe.

It smelled. Like rot and mold and wet concrete. Like years of neglect.

My mini-flashlight revealed puddles and water running down the tunnel floor as it descended deeper underground. Every few metres I could see deeper blackness where side passages led off the main tunnel.

I shivered. Not just from the cold, but because of the empty echoes of our footsteps and the creepy, steady drip of water from the roof. And because we were seconds from meeting the woman who might know what happened the day Granddad died.

“Bet you ten bucks she’s working a scam,” Steve whispered.

For two weeks we’d been questioning everyone we could find who might have seen something in the Valley the day Granddad died. Nothing had panned out so far. Not until today, when we’d gotten a lead from a guy who lived in a patchwork tent down here. He knew this woman who’d told him she’d seen a man matching Granddad’s description digging out here on the day he died.

“I have to follow through with this,” I said, blindly handing Leakey’s leash to Steve as I flashed my light down the tunnel. If I didn’t, I’d be haunted. I couldn’t let a chance to uncover the truth pass just because the set-up made Steve think I’d get hurt.

A footstep splashed ahead of us and, when I swung the light on an alcove to my left, there she was. A bundle wrapped in a dozen old coats and scarves. Stringy hair hung on wet shoulders. A frozen, frightening smile. And cold, dark eyes.

Steve made a noise that could have been a gasp.

I had to work to keep the light from shaking in my hand. This was it. Quick clouds of breath formed and dissolved in front of me as I slip-slid through the puddles between us, anxiety building with each step. Four feet from her I couldn’t take it anymore, I had to do something to relieve the tension. I flexed my fingers and reached under my tool belt and into my pocket.

“Stop,” she barked, a hundred tonnes of weather and old rocks in her voice. Cigarettes and damp ground at night and God knew what else. “What are you doing with your hand?”

My fingers closed around the item in my pocket. I held up my other hand. “It’s okay.”

There was nothing in her eyes. Coal chips. The life pressed out of them. I froze. I needed her to trust me. “It’s okay,” I repeated, forcing myself not to look away.

A half-dozen drips splashed into the puddle at my feet, before, finally, she nodded.

I whipped the photo from my pocket and pushed it at her. “Is this the man you saw, two weeks ago? With the digging equipment?”

She didn’t look at the paper, instead she stared past me, at Leakey. Over-sized front teeth worried at her lower lip. “He’s okay, don’t worry,” I said, shaking the photograph at her. “Please, this is my granddad. Where did you see him?”

She stared at Leakey. Then forced her nervous lip-nibbling into a smirk. She glanced at the photo I was trying to hold steady in front of her. The smirk gained confidence. She stood straighter.

“Do you have a map?” She smiled, but it was cold. There was something behind it. Something I didn’t like.

“And a pen. I can show you where I saw him digging. There is something you need to see there.” She nodded, vigorously. “Very special, very strange.”

Digging.

Electricity ran through my guts. He was digging, I knew it. I knew he hadn’t really turned his back on the profession. Hadn’t really retired.

He was the greatest fossil hunter of our age. And he’d been out here in our Valley digging again.

My hand flexed into a fist. I looked at Steve, See? I was right…. But he wouldn’t give me any satisfaction. No comment. Not even a shrug. Still that wary look on his face.

Whatever.

This was happening. I frantically motioned at him for a map. He hesitated. Then, shaking his head, pulled a sheaf of folded papers and a pen from a pocket on the sleeve of his rain jacket. With a couple of practiced snaps, he had one of the maps open. “This is the area, here,” he said, pointing to the right side of the page. He glared at me out of the corners of his eyes. A slash that said, careful.

The woman’s nods had slowed, decelerated into a rhythmic bob. “Come here. Closer. I’ll mark it.”

Something, some disquiet just short of an alarm, rang around the back of my head.

But about what?

One small woman?

We were two quick kids. Plus, Leakey.

I shook out my arms, trying to loosen up, then stepped towards her, map held out in front of me.

She watched me. Hunger in her face. Something new in her eyes as I held out my hand. A glimmer, a light that hadn’t been there a minute ago.

“F,” Steve said. Warning making his voice rattle.

“It’s cool,” I said. A tremor in the paper map.

I shoved it and the pen at her. Forcing the movement. A thrust, before I went paralyzed from the tension. Breaths came like stop-and-go traffic. Lurching. Irregular.

Please don’t be another scam. Please.

Please don’t go wrong this time.

Please. Please. Please. I just kept repeating the one word in my head as the woman looked down at Steve’s hand-drawn map.

I watched her scanning. Then, for the briefest part of a second, her eyes locked on a square. Just for an instant, before her head snapped up, lips pared back over those teeth. “Another man was here before you. He paid us to keep you away from that place.”

What? Before the question even made it to my lips her hands shot out and clamped around my arm. Hard. Hurting.

“Got him,” she screeched into the blackness of the tunnel. “You’ll regret ever coming here. We’re going to make sure you never come back to this valley, so our benefactor can work in peace.”

Behind her, two hulks charged from an alcove. Heads almost scraping the tunnel ceiling. Coming fast. Coats flapping. Arms outstretched. Boring straight at me. The big one had a droopy eye and turned down lips. His partner, a wide bus, sported neck muscles packed on top of each other like cuts of meat in a butcher’s case.

“You’re crazy,” I screamed, pulling against the woman’s grip as hard as I could. “Let me go.” Her talons dug in my forearm, spearing into the muscle.

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