Mirrorworlds death in the clay E-Book

Rolf Glöckner

• Herausgeber: neobooks
• Kategorie: Fantasy und Science-Fiction
• Sprache: Deutsch

Seitenzahl: 244

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2025

Beschreibung

Mirror Worlds Death in the clay A strange murder takes place in Oldenburg. The detectives begin to investigate and come across an incredible event on the Nazca Plain in Peru, where a group of scientists are working. And then another murder takes place in Oldenburg. The friends from the mirror worlds intervene and things take a magical turn!

Leseprobe

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Mirror worldsDeath in the clay

A fantasy thriller by

Rolf Glöckner

1st edition English 2025                

© Rolf Glöckner

Cover photos:                © Landscape: © nnerto - Fotolia.com

                                © Pyramid: © Premium Collection - Fotolia.com

© Rolf Glöckner private

Sculpture by Alan Dickinson                 

http://alandickinsonportfolio.weebly.com/

Creator:                © Tom Jay

About the writer

Rolf Glöckner, born in Georgsmarienhütte in 1945, now lives in Oldenburg. He is enjoying his well-deserved retirement after more than thirty years in IT and is now involved in astronomy, astrophysics, photography, astrophotography and, of course and above all, writing. He is married and has a son. After three fantasy novels, "Mirrorworlds the twelve books“, Mirrorworlds The Crystal war and "Mirrorworlds The witches’s castle“, "Mirrorworlds death in the clay" is Glöckner's first fantasy thriller. It begins with a murder in his home town of Oldenburg, jumps to Peru and the south of England. The adventure ends on the plain of Nazca. The protagonists of the first books are once again called upon to solve the crimes.

Chapter 1

Death in the clay

He was out early in the morning, as he often was, to run a few errands, as the Christmas holidays were just over. The only annoying thing was that he had forgotten his hat when he left the house. It felt colder than he had expected. The wind brushed against his bald head. Lost in thought, he put foot to foot when he suddenly felt an icy cold breeze on the back of his neck and on his scalp. It wasn't the breeze he had just felt, it seemed uncanny to him. Goose bumps crept from his loins up the back of his neck and the skin on his arms began to tighten. He cautiously turned around. The panic that struck him squeezed his chest. He felt a fearful tightness and his breath wanted to stop. All the muscles in his body tightened when he saw it! A shimmering gray and silver face with glowing red eyes and flowing black hair poking out from under a strange headdress emerged from the cold, misty winter morning in front of him. Words he didn't understand came at him like a torrent. A jet-black ring suddenly appeared next to his face and from it a night-black knife-like object covered in glowing blood-red symbols shot towards him with a shrill whistling sound and hit him in the chest. A sharp pain shot through him as the pointed wedge dug into his body through his thick winter jacket. His legs gave way and Wilhelm Marquard fell onto the embankment that bordered the path to the clay pit, his hands stretched upwards as if in a defensive stance.

He gasped for air one last time. Warm blood ran from his body and dripped onto the frozen earth. He heard a roar of laughter before he sank into a never-ending darkness and the ice-cold water crashed over him. His heart stood still forever.

Walk

The Christmas holidays were just over. As she did every morning, the old woman walked along the small footpath by the Tonkuhle in Eversten. She had her old sheepdog in tow, who could only move forward with difficulty with the help of a small cart with two wheels on which his hindquarters rested. They walked around the clay hollow at a slow pace. She kept looking around for her old and weak companion.

Her gaze fell on the large willow tree, which was lying half in the water, its trunk stretched in an arc over the surface. She gave a shrill cry and an icy chill rose up inside her. Under the arch of the tree, she saw a figure lying there in the water, its head and hands stretched upwards as if in great despair. She was still screaming, loud and shrill.

A young man on a bicycle approached and stopped. "What's wrong, why are you screaming so loudly?" he wanted to know. The old woman, unable to speak due to her horror, pointed to the surface of the water in panic and screamed again. The young man saw what he was looking at and reached for his smartphone. Excited, he dialed the emergency number for the police and a tired-sounding voice answered. "Tell me your name, please describe the event and the place where it happened." The boy stuttered excitedly: "There's a male figure lying in the water in the Tonkuhle in Eversten. An old woman who was walking her dog discovered it." The police officer started up and said loudly: "Stay there, don't touch anything, don't trample around, we'll send a car out to you immediately."

Only minutes later, an increasingly loud siren could be heard and blue flashes flashed through the rows of trees at the edge of the small lake. A police emergency vehicle approached on the footpath leading around the Tonkuhle. The officers stopped the car and jumped out. They looked around and then saw the old woman, turned to her and asked: "Where is the person you saw?" The woman, horror still etched on her features, pointed to the half-decayed willow trunk, under which a figure was lying in the water. In the meantime, the fire department, ambulance and an emergency doctor had also arrived and the men from the fire department and ambulance wanted to start carefully pulling the presumably dead man out of the water, but were prevented from doing so by the emergency services, who said "We're not finished yet". A mortician from the neighborhood had also already been informed and after a short time the vehicle of the requested funeral home approached and stopped. The rear door was opened and a zinc coffin became visible.

Suddenly one of the police officers said to his colleague: "There's something wrong here, look at the chest area of the dead man, there's something there!" A black, razor-sharp piece of glass, which looked strangely worked, was sticking out between the second and third ribs of the dead man. The slightly thicker part, which was probably the handle, was emblazoned with blood-red symbols. "I'll call the homicide squad and the Institute of Forensic Medicine, I think they should be there too. There's obviously been a violent crime here." He picked up his mobile phone and connected to the control center while his colleague took over the call to forensic medicine in Pappelallee. He was put through to the doctor on duty and briefly described the incident that had taken place at the Tonkuhle in Eversten and what he and his colleague suspected had happened. His interlocutor immediately agreed to come. He arrived at the Tonkuhle after about ten minutes, as it wasn't too far from Pappelallee. After inspecting the scene and the dead body lying in the water, he asked for the body to be brought ashore. The firefighters set to work and carefully pulled the heavy corpse out of the water and laid it on the grass at the edge of the clay pond. The forensic pathologist leaned over and took a closer look at the glass dagger and then said: "I've never seen anything like this in my long career, so we won't be able to avoid an autopsy at the institute!" Now we should wait for the investigators before we have the body brought to the institute." He spoke briefly with the morticians, who then unloaded a zinc coffin. Chief Inspector Reinhard Osthoff's phone rang. He picked up and mumbled into the receiver: "Please don't take longer than half an hour to solve this case, I have to attend my mother-in-law's birthday party this afternoon." "Yes," he heard, "it will probably take longer, our colleagues from the police and fire department have pulled a body out of the water at the Tonkuhle in Eversten, the forensic scientist is already on site and we think it's a case for the homicide squad. The person was obviously stabbed to death. With a shard of glass!" the voice added.

"Right, we'll be right there," the chief inspector grumbled angrily. "Don't touch anything for the time being, I'll also inform the forensics team and cordon off the area so that curious people don't trample everything!" "We've already done that," he was told, "There's already quite a crowd here, the path along the Tonkuhle is mainly used by cyclists and there are also a lot of schoolchildren here, they'll probably be late for school now."

"OK," Osthoff grumbled, "I'll see you in a minute." He hung up the phone and called his colleague, Inspector Marie Marvelis, and briefly reported what had just been reported. He quickly informed the forensics team and asked them to come to the crime scene quickly. The detectives set off together.

Chapter 2

Recording

They left the police building, got into the chief inspector's car and drove to the Tonkuhle in Eversten. A crowd of curious people had already gathered there and by now the wildest rumors were doing the rounds. Osthoff asked his police colleagues to disperse the crowd and turned to the old woman, who had taken a seat on a bench, exhausted from the fright, and asked her to describe how she had become aware of the dead man. He made a note of her name, gave her a business card and asked her to get in touch if she thought of anything else. Then he turned to his colleagues and asked: "Do you know who it is yet?" His colleagues shook their heads. "That too," thought the chief inspector, "an unknown body, that's all I need today." The doctor approached him. "Unfortunately, I can't say when death occurred, he's probably been lying in the cold water of the clay pond for more than an hour, I can only say anything else after the autopsy, tomorrow, oh no, Monday I'll probably have the results. I'll leave the strange dagger in for now, we'll find out everything else at the institute. In the meantime, the mortician can bring the body to us. In the meantime, the press had arrived and wanted to know what had happened at this place.

Three members of the forensics team had arrived and the colleagues stood shaking their heads on the path, looking at the grassy area bordering the clay pit. "How are we supposed to find any clues at all in this wet grass? We've already looked at the strange glass blade, there are no fingerprints there, the perpetrator or perpetrators must have been wearing gloves. We estimate that the dead man weighs about ninety kilos and we can't be sure whether he was killed here. But if he was killed somewhere else and brought here, there should be traces. We'll take a closer look in a moment. The strange symbol on the glass dagger still puzzles us. It has been engraved and resembles a sickle with an arrow sticking through it in a circle. Above these two symbols there is something that looks like a rune or an Indian symbol and it is very professionally made." The three forensic men cautiously stepped onto the lawn and took a closer look. "There!" said one of them, "That could be a mark that's quite deeply indented and the edge of the shoe is quite visible on the legacy of a dog." A print was quickly taken and packed. "O.K., we'll break off. Take the body to the forensics department, we'll see what happens on Monday and I'll be in time for my mother-in-law's birthday party tonight." He turned to his partner and said with a smile: "Marie, I have one more task for you today. Check whether there have been any reports of missing persons in the meantime and have a look online for this strange blade, maybe you'll find it." Inspector Marvelis nodded devotedly.

In the meantime, the morticians got to work, placed the body in the now open zinc coffin, closed it and loaded it into their car. A short time later, they drove off in the direction of Pappelallee. "He's always asking me to do this investigative work, and again on a Friday, I want to get off work on time today," Marie thought to herself. It was quite a while before the place where a terrible crime had been committed looked peaceful again. They went to the chief inspector's car and together they made their way to the police station on Friedhofsweg.

There Marie got out and angrily went into her office, turned on the light, switched on her PC and began searching for the glass dagger, or whatever the killing tool might have been. She also searched for the symbols she had seen on the handle of the glass blade. The initial results were nil. She extended the search to manufacturers of glass accessories abroad, but even there she found nothing that could possibly fit. Nothing! Then she thought of something. She wanted to search through the missing persons reports she had received. But again, she found nothing that matched the event from the morning. By now it was late afternoon and Marie was overcome by tiredness.

"I should call it a day, Chief Inspector Osthoff would probably have devoured a few pieces of cake by now and her daughter is probably home by now!" she thought, switched her PC to stand-by mode, grabbed her handbag and was just about to leave when the phone rang. She went back to her desk and picked up the phone. On the other end was Jan Meiertöns from forensics. "I've got something for you, you know the shoe print we took. It's almost certainly from a rubber boot from an English manufacturer. I'll look into it tomorrow, see who in Oldenburg has something like that in their range. However, if the boots were sold over the Internet, the trail will disappear again, unless I contact all the suppliers. I'll call it a day now."

"English wellies, a glass dagger, strange symbols, where could that have come from?" Marie said aloud to herself. She picked up her handbag a second time, put on her coat and left the police station. When she was almost at the car, her cell phone rang. Annoyed, she answered the call. It was the switchboard! "It's a good thing we caught her, we've just had a call from a very upset-sounding woman. She's missing her husband. You had a homicide today. Can't you just go and see the woman? The woman also stuttered something about a glowing symbol on the wall of her house. Please do us a favor, inspector, maybe there's a connection. The address is:" the colleague told her the street and house number and added: "Unfortunately, I couldn't understand the caller's name." Marie snorted angrily. Everything, but everything, got stuck on her that Friday. All right, it wasn't a big detour on her way home.

She got into the car, started the engine and made her way to Eichenstrasse. Once there, she parked her car on the verge, got out and walked over to the house. Something was glowing and shimmering in different colors through the hedge that closed off the house from the footpath. She opened the garden gate and walked along the red brick sidewalk towards the house. The light became brighter and shone in different levels of brightness. She was startled when she took a closer look. There was a brightly lit symbol on the wall. "Damn!" Marie thought to herself, "I saw that thing on the handle of the glass dagger!" She took out her cell phone and took a photo.

Then, quite confused, she went to the front door and pressed the bell. An elderly woman opened the door and looked at her excitedly. Marie fumbled out her ID, showed it and introduced herself. "Is there anything I can do for you?" the woman asked distraught, and before Marie could say anything, she blurted out: "Does your visit have something to do with my husband, he hasn't been home since this morning. Shortly after he left, there was a strange light on the wall of the house. I went outside and saw these mysterious signs. What's wrong with my husband, he just wanted to do some shopping and go to Raiffeisenbank to get some money. Has something happened to him? Do you know anything?"

Marie nodded reassuringly at her and said: "We'll go to Pappelallee together now, maybe everything will clear up then. We found a dead body in the Tonkuhle this morning, male, about sixty years old and I would like to ask you to accompany me to identify the person." She added reassuringly: "You've filed a missing person's report and we need to check it out now. Put some clothes on and come and it would be nice if you could tell me their name." Confused, the woman obeyed and stammered: "My name is Renate Marquard." Then she went into the house, put on a coat loosely and followed Marie to the car. A short time later, they arrived at the Institute of Forensic Medicine in Pappelallee. The doorman opened the gate and called out to the inspector: "Hello, Marie, still on duty?" Marie mumbled something and drove up to the large building. They entered and went down the stairs to the basement. The woman now began to tremble with fear, but Marie put her hand on her shoulder reassuringly, stepped towards a large double door and opened it. In the room behind it, covered with a large green cloth, lay a figure on a large table. The doctor on duty, also dressed in green, stood up from his desk and turned around. "Hello, M2, let's go then." He asked the woman to join him and lifted the sheet slightly over the looming head. A face contorted in agony became visible. The woman screamed in agony, Marie took her in her arms and asked in a low voice: "Mrs. Marquard, is that your husband?" The woman nodded and the stream of tears seemed unending. "Yes, that's my husband, his name is Wilhelm, but everyone always called him Willi," she stammered.

Marie let go of her while the doctor wrote down the name and address, which the inspector passed on to him. "Come on," she turned to the woman. "I'll take you home now, on Monday please come to the police station, where we'll take down everything you know. "But how did this accident happen? It was an accident, wasn't it?" the woman stuttered, still in tears. "Unfortunately not," Marie replied, "based on what we know at the moment, we have to assume it was a homicide. Obviously he was stabbed with a glass dagger, on which I could see the same symbol that is on the wall of your house. We don't know where it happened, and whether he was thrown into the water of the Tonkuhle afterwards is still unclear. "But my husband never harmed anyone, he was always helpful and popular in the neighborhood, I don't understand!" the woman moaned. Marie continued to talk to her reassuringly as they left the forensic department. Together they entered the elevator and went upstairs. A few minutes later, they reached Eichenstraße and Marie took the woman, who was still crying profusely and trembling all over, into the house. Finally, she asked: "Do you have anyone you want to call, family members or good friends?" The woman answered excitedly: "My son Johannes, he is an archaeologist and has been in Peru for about a month on an excavation. But I have a good friend who I will call."

Marie was reassured, squeezed the woman's hand and went out. The strange symbol on the wall of the house was still glowing in its color-changing light until it suddenly disappeared with a soft smacking sound, only to reappear immediately. What remained on the wall of the house was an image that looked like graffiti, burned into the wall. "Thank God," thought Marie, "I took a photo, so we can compare it with the symbol on the dagger on Monday." She made her way home.

Chapter 3

In England

                Carolyn and Tom sat with their parents and their Uncle Hans and his trolls in the large living room and reviewed what had happened. Something was bothering Tom, who had an old cupboard in his field of vision. Something began to flicker on the shiny surface of the left-hand door. Tom looked up and said to Carolyn, who was sitting with her back to the cupboard: "Please, Carolyn, look around, look at the cupboard door and tell me what you see there." Carolyn turned around and then said in amazement, "It shimmers and flickers, I see different symbols but I can't identify them. Maybe I can stop it and make it clearer." She stood up, took a silver box, opened it and took out her wand. She pointed it at the cupboard, muttered something and the image on the cupboard door froze.

"Could be runes," Tom remarked. "Maybe Egyptian, no, now I know! It's from Central or South America somehow, I'll see if I can find anything about it." He stormed up the stairs in leaps and bounds, causing his parents to shake their heads. The young man disappeared for a while, but then came back and said: "Could be anything, Inca, Mayan, Aztec, Toltec, Chichimec..." Carolyn interrupted him with a laugh and shouted: "Enough, we should ask Father or Uncle Hans, maybe they know something." Tom, always practical, had meanwhile fetched his camera and snapped some pictures. "There," he said to Carolyn, "let's get on with it!" The girl raised the wand she was still holding in her hand, pointed it at the cupboard door and quietly spoke a strange-sounding word. The symbols began to move again, became fainter and almost disappeared, but not without a trace. A circle had formed on the wooden door, filled with all kinds of symbols and figures. Strange lines could be seen in the background.

  Marc, her father, had stood up and approached. He frowned and took a closer look at the symbols and signs. Then he shook his head and said: "Strange, something looks familiar. Some of the symbols come from South America. They're very old, I'll have a look in the library now to see if I can find anything about them. I've seen the lines before, I think they're the Nazca lines in Peru." He disappeared behind a big old door, which closed behind him with a resounding sound. After quite a while, the siblings were already getting restless, the door opened again and Marc, looking a little excited, said: "It's confirmed, it must have something to do with Peru, a team of German archaeologists is currently excavating there, I read about it in the newspaper. The symbols and the lines in the background must have something to do with it, I'm quite sure."

  Hans, her uncle, who had been sitting quietly in his armchair until now, joined in the conversation. "Perhaps we should ask our trolls, they've helped us many times." Lanudas, who had been sitting a little sleepily in the breast pocket of Hans' jacket for some time, climbed out and sat on the armrest of the armchair and fumbled: "Shall we, my friends and I, have a look? There might be something there that could help us." Tom and Carolyn looked at each other in astonishment when Carolyn suddenly gave a startled cry. The symbols and lines in the circle on the door went out and a glowing object formed, very similar to a dagger. A red liquid dripped from its tip and a brightly glowing image appeared on the handle. Then the circle with the bloody knife disappeared, leaving a large black mark on the cupboard door. Tom had reacted quickly and captured another photo of the bloody knife, which he thought was made of a glassy material.

The children, their uncle and their parents looked at each other, perplexed. Was it a threat? Hans shook his head and looked at his trolls, a little uncomprehendingly.

Chapter 4

On the plain of Nazca, Peru

                       Roughly halfway between Quito and Lima on the South American continent of Peru lies the Nazca plain with its mysterious scarified images. In 1924, these lines were seen by air passengers and the discovery was confirmed in 1927 by a Peruvian archaeologist on one of his numerous hikes. After the Peruvian archaeologist Johny Isla thought he had found a solution for the images on the Nazca plain at the beginning of the twenty-first century, the German archaeologist Johannes Marquard from Oldenburg set off for Peru with a group of German and European scientists to confirm or refute the Peruvian researcher's findings that the lines were ritual paths that had once been trodden by a vanished culture. Just like Isla, he had gathered a wide range of different fields of knowledge around him, but so far the results of the investigations were not very encouraging and some of the theories that were expressed during their evening conversations often sounded very adventurous. However, the scientists led by Johannes Marquard agreed on one point: it could not be a matter of ritualistic paths, for example, when looking at the great ape. Where could humans have gone? The lines ended in a spiral! Or was there something hidden in the ground at the end of the spiral? They would probably have to dig. But they were sure they would find something, even if it took some time. They were the scientists Johannes Marquard, head of the company and archaeologist, Sven Christensen from Denmark, geologist, Jan van der Veen from Holland, also an archaeologist, John Smitson from England, astrophysicist, Helen Myers from the USA, astrobiologist, Alfredo Contigo, archaeologist from Peru and Charles McMahon, geophysicist from England.

                For three weeks, Christmas had just passed, Johannes Marquard had been standing in front of his camper van, which served as both his laboratory and sleeping quarters, thinking. The scientists from a wide variety of countries and disciplines who were to join him in his final exploration of the secrets of the Nazca Plain in Peru had already disappeared into their accommodation. Many things went through his mind and what had happened during the day stayed with him for a long time. They had discovered something resembling an altar at the intersection of a very large geoglyph and discovered that this altar had been altered several times. This suggested different periods of settlement. Were they on the right track?

                Perhaps he should catch up with the balloon with the thermal imaging camera now, as the wind was picking up and it was getting noticeably cooler. The balloon with the camera would provide them with thermal images of the scrape lines from a height, which could possibly yield new results for their research. No one had ever tried this before. He had only ever seen images from an airplane.

  He walked over to the machine, started the engine and switched on the winch. Slowly, very slowly, the balloon was pulled down towards him. The thin steel cable rolled around the large drum with a crunch. Once at the bottom, Johannes released the camera from its holder, turned around and turned to his sleeping place when he saw a strange movement in the corner of his eye. A ring of gray-silver metal emerged from the sand next to one of the countless scratched lines. John was sure that he or one of his colleagues should have noticed such an object: this ring had not been there the days before. Slowly, shaking his head, he approached the metallic gray-looking ring, bent down and pulled on it. Fine lines in a square shape became visible. He was overcome with excitement. What had he discovered now? He quietly went to his mobile home and fetched a lamp so that he could take a closer look at the ring. No, he wanted to investigate this strange story on his own now, he could tell his colleagues about his discovery the next morning.

                When he reached the strange ring, he bent down and pulled hard on the heavy metal ring. The plate in which the ring was embedded loosened slightly from its anchorage. He lifted it, carefully put it aside without making a sound and shone his lamp into the dark opening leading downwards. Steps hewn from stone led down into the depths. He hesitated. Shouldn't he get the other scientists to join him? But he decided to descend alone. Carefully, he felt his way down step by step. After exactly fifteen stone steps carved into the rock, he reached the bottom of the shaft.