MYSTERY HILL by Alex Irvine

Ken Kassarjian is a Vietnam veteran who runs a mini-golf course that centers upon peculiar flux in gravity. Mini-golfers experience a disquieting loss of equilibrium while rounding the 17th hole. This strange break in the laws of gravity brings out both the crazies, who need to believe, and the scientists, who need to assure themselves that the world only has one set of rules. The best part about Ken’s character is that he loves and puts up with both the believers and the debunkers. 

Ken has heard every possible theory to explain the strange pull that his roadside attraction over people, everything from, string theory to lizard men from another dimension existing parallel to our own. Only thing that Ken knows is that people are willing to pay good money to play 18 holes of mini-golf and take a look around his property. What his patrons believe and take away from their experience is their matter entirely. However, Ken, has his suspicions and his own theory about “Mystery Hill.”

Every now and again, a customer will admit to hitting what looked like a turtle on their drive over, just down the road. Ken knows better. He’s taken and stuffed a few of the strange creatures and keeps them hidden away in his shed until he can figure out what they are and what to do with them.

Then, one day, a rugged beauty shows up. She seems to be a debunker and Ken is not in the mood for a debunker. She has all kinds of strange looking devices that Ken knows will take measurements that will likely mount to nothing. But he takes her money all the same and points her in the right direction because he’s got to get out to the highway. She’s told him that she believes that she hit something that looked like a turtle a ways back.   

What follows next is an urban fantasy that leads to an eye-popping discovery that will change Ken’s life forever. Ken will help the young attractive scientist travel to another dimension and safely back again, but not without some cost. Ken must first over come Vera, a true believer, who will stop at nothing to be reunited with her “people,” and a bootlegger, who sells psychedelic tea to teenagers.

“Mystery Hill” is a fun romp in a strange world where bizarre theories are science fact and some roads should be left unexplored.    

Irvine, Alex. “Mystery Hill.” PS Publishing, 2009