"Same to you," Noble replied to the dog.
He walked down the hall and checked on Olivia before hitting the bathroom. She was still sound asleep. The other two dogs raised their heads, but did not get up. They all appeared to have fallen asleep in one position and were still in the same position from the night before. No one had disturbed them and they must have all slept soundly.
Noble walked and fed the dogs and then took his shower. He was tired. He felt as though he had not slept at all. He also felt dehydrated from sleeping on that sofa that had the tendency to drain you of water like some furniture vampire.
He had not thought about that time when he was six in ages. The fact he had so successfully pushed it out of his mind amazed him. Had there been other times? As he stood there shaving, staring at his face in the mirror, he could not remember anything, but he had that tingling at the base of his skull. It was as if the memories were there, but just out of reach.
His brain was churning around and around, trying to find other strange happenings throughout his life while he got out his suitcase and began to quietly throw clothes into it. He moved in the dark, not wanting to wake Olivia up. When he was done, he sat on the bed and looked at her for a moment.
He loved her. There was no denying that. They had met five years ago via an online dating service. The moment she had appeared in front of him at the coffee shop where they had planned to meet, he knew she was something special. Smart. Funny. Beautiful. He was in love before he knew what hit him, but unlike the other times he thought he had been in love, this time everything about her and about them felt right.
Now he worried he had just betrayed something with her.
Plus, there was that nagging feeling that he might be losing his mind.
"Olivia," he whispered. "I'm heading out. I'm going to be in D.C. for a couple days."
Olivia muttered something in her sleep and then her eyes opened slowly. She blinked and looked at him, her hair a bit of a mess and a crease down her right cheek from the pillow.
"OK," she said. "Have a safe trip."
Noble leaned in and she kissed him. There was a tension between them that even the dogs could feel, as they all raised their heads to look at them curiously. He hugged her.
"I'm sorry about last night," he said.
"Have a good trip," she repeated. "Call me when you get to the hotel."
Noble pulled back and then he extended his right hand, balled into a fist. After a moment of staring at him, Olivia extended her own fist and bumped it with his.
"Wiiiinnnnnnnn," they said in unison.
Noble leaned in for one more kiss and then stood up. He looked back at her as he exited the bedroom and walked down the hall.
He felt better. The fist bump thing had started the first time they had gone on a road trip together. It was now a good luck ritual that they did anytime one of them had to travel or had something big planned for the day.
It wasn't much, but the fact that Olivia had not seemed mad at him and had done the fist-bump ritual, he felt better.
***
Noble was not the world's best flyer. He did not enjoy the idea of being over 20,000 feet in the air because, if something went wrong, and the plane fell, it would take a while and he would be awake and screaming that entire time. It was hard to shake that image once it wiggled its way into his brain.
The airport was full of activity, people running all over the place, but this time Noble barely noticed. He had this nagging feeling that he was supposed to be making this trip. He had important things to learn and nothing was going to stop him. If the plane started to crash, he would find a way to sprout wings and fly there himself.
Despite that thought, he was still nervous.
The plane was not very crowded which allowed Noble to spread out and once the plane reached cruising altitude, he was able to pull out his laptop and get it hooked up to the plane's Wi-Fi. He checked his emails and spent time trying to learn more about Dr. Shaw.
The man had a reputation, it seemed, for writing about the supernatural. Noble spent some time reviewing the paper the man had written about alternate dimensions. Much of it was well over his head, but there were a few things that stood out.
Shadow men, for one.
Black-eyed children for another.
Noble did a search for shadow men. It turned out that people had been reporting seeing strange men with red eyes lurking in the shadows for a long, long time. There were theories that they were ghosts or aliens. Other-dimensional beings seemed to be the most popular version. A guy who had a nightly radio talk show about the supernatural and unexplained had an entire episode dedicated to the shadow men.
The shadow men never seemed to do anything sinister. They did not usually interact with the people who had seen them and most of the time the shadow men appeared surprised that the person they were watching was able to see them in return. This brought about the idea that they were from different dimensions, but sent here to watch us and study us. Perhaps, went one theory, they vibrated at a different frequency from the rest of us, but some people were more tuned to those alternate frequencies.
It sounded like heaps and heaps of steaming bullshit to Noble.
The black-eyed children were a relatively new phenomenon. All of the incidents that Noble could find constituted the same thing. They showed up at night and knocked on the door. They asked for a phone. At some point, they would raise their heads and reveal that they had pitch-black eyes.
What was absent was any detail about what happened if the black-eyed children were let into the home. It seemed anyone who had a story to tell did not let them in, but just left them on the porch until they eventually went away. However, the general consensus was that they were up to something sinister. They wanted to scare people.
Again, it sounded like bullshit.
Except that Noble had seen the shadow men. He had seen the message left on the fridge. And he had most definitely seen the black-eyed children at Eveline's house.
It was giving Noble more questions than it was providing answers and his head was pounding. Noble put away his laptop and then eased his seat back. He did not normally fall asleep on planes, but this time he was sound asleep in moments.
***
Noble was ten-years-old and playing outside on a hot summer morning. Like a lot of times, he was up earlier than his friends and he was out in the front yard before any of them were awake. That was fine with Noble because he often played on his own, relying solely on his imagination. This morning he was playing on the front porch, pretending he was a soldier battling the Russkies in a war on the Alaskan border.
Noble and his family had been living in this house for a few years now. It had been his grandmother's home and the one in which his mom had grown up. Then his grandmother had died of cancer and his parents bought the house. After they moved in his parents added an addition to the back of the home and remodeled the bathroom. It had taken some time, but Noble now thought of it as his home.
The block he lived on was populated with mostly old people, though, and that was frustrating to him. He had befriended a few of the older people and old couples, but he longed for friends his own age. There were kids on the block, but they were all girls and Noble had yet to reach an age when such a thing would not seem like endless torture.
There was an older couple living next door. They had no kids, but the man was really nice. He also had a basement filled with baseball stuff that Noble loved to look at. The man's nephew had been a major league baseball player at one time. They also sometimes babysat and he always had a good time with them.
The old couple and the others on the block were none of Noble's concern on that particular morning. Instead, he was lost in his game. Jumping off the porch and pretending to shoot enemy soldiers. The sky was bright, the color blue tinged with white and yellow from the pollution and humidity. It was warm, climbing into hot later that day as the sun grew higher in the sky.
Noble ran down the driveway and headed tow
ard the backyard. Just as he entered the space between his house and the neighbor's house he felt that strange queasiness. It was just for an instant and then it was gone. Noble skidded to a stop, his brain suddenly worried and concerned about what had just happened.
There was something familiar about that sensation.
What was it?
There was a shuffling sound from behind Noble. He turned around and there was a woman in a blue robe with dark, curly, hair and wearing white slippers. She was middle-aged, perhaps, maybe at most 50. There was something about her that was sort of familiar, but he was sure that he had never seen this woman before.
She looked still half-asleep and she was shuffling along.
Noble kept walking, his brow furrowed, a look of confusion etched across his face. The woman just kept shuffling along, as the two of them passed, she raised her head and looked to her right.
"Hello," she said.
"Hi," Noble said.
He decided that maybe it was a friend staying with the neighbor or something. He turned and ran toward the backyard. As he reached the gate he stopped, his hand outstretched toward the latch.
"Grandma?" Noble asked.
She had been younger than when Noble last saw his grandmother, but there was something about the hair, about the way her face looked. He had seen photos of his grandmother, in his mother's collection and photo books, back when she was younger, and he thought there was a resemblance. But he wasn’t sure. He had an active imagination, which was great, but it also sometimes played tricks on him.
Noble ran back to the front of the house. The woman was gone. As he reached the middle of the driveway he had that sensation of his stomach dropping once again. In a flash he was out in front of the house.
The street was empty.
The birds were singing. There was traffic on the busy road about four doors down. A breeze rustled the trees.
No woman.
No one.
Noble stood there looking around, studying the neighborhood and the street. He was alone.
***
Noble awoke as the plane touched down in Washington. He was mildly pleased, although his brain was still fuzzy and the dream he had been having was still prominent in his mind. He always hoped to sleep through flights, and was usually too nervous to do so, so this had been a pleasant surprise. It saved time worrying about each bump from turbulence.
He had not thought about that day when he saw the strange woman that reminded him of his grandmother in a long time.
How many more memories were there still hidden away inside his brain? How many more times had he felt that dropping sensation in his stomach?
The plane taxied to the right gate and the people around him immediately began turning on their cell phones, making calls and texting. Noble fished his out and sent a note to Olivia that he had landed.
He got his luggage and trudged into the airport. It was busy, like most airports, but Noble was lost in his thoughts. He had a million questions for Dr. Shaw. He felt as though he had a million more for Dashiell.
He was out of the airport in less than fifteen minutes. He flagged down a cab and was mercifully back in air conditioning before he had time to really sweat.
The ride was uneventful, but his head was spinning around and around like clothes in a dryer. So many thoughts, now added on top of the same litany of questions.
Noble barely remembered paying the cab driver as he got out of the car. The cab driver wished him a good day with a huge smile, which probably meant that Noble had tipped him quite well.
He walked through the halls, determined, building quite a head of steam. When he reached Dashiell's office he pushed through the door and stomped into the office.
Dashiell was standing there, as if waiting for him. Next to Dashiell was a portly man with a beard and glasses. Noble recognized him as Dr. Shaw.
"I want answers and I want them right fucking now!" Noble said, that weird feeling of being betrayed or part of something well beyond his control was strong. "Why am I remembering more and more times when things just weren't right and that I may have seen my dead grandmother at one point? Who are those shadow men that I keep seeing? Who the hell are the black-eyed children? What does this have to do with Francis Duveen? And what the fuck, Dashiell, have you been hiding from me? Oh, and finally, who the holy fuck are you Dr. Shaw?"
The outburst came in a rush and Noble had little regard for the volume of his voice. Shaw and Dashiell stood there agape. Dashiell raised both of his hands, but Noble kept shouting questions. Dash finally raised his voice and cut him off.
"Enough!" Dashiell said. "Noble, this is Dr. Shaw. Please come into the conference room so we can talk."
Noble was breathing hard, sweat running down his forehead. He was out of breath and forced himself to stop his shouting. He was more angry than he had ever remembered being before.
"Fine," Noble said.
He stormed past the two men and into the conference room. Noble sat down, throwing down his luggage. He crossed his arms across his chest and waited.
Part Two
The Onion
Chapter Six
Dr. Lance Shaw, fresh out of college, stood in his laboratory. HIS laboratory. He said those two words over and over again in his mind. He was so proud.
He was years away from becoming a professor at MIT and just a couple of months away from publishing his papers about the supernatural that threatened to derail his career entirely.
Shaw had graduated with degrees in biology, chemistry and physics. He had never been the kind of person to do just one thing at a time. It had been difficult to get three degrees, but he would not have changed things for all the money in the world.
Then, when he graduated, the Gemini Corporation had offered him all the money in the world.
At least it had seemed that way to a kid in his early 20s and just starting out in the big city. He had been able to get a nice car and a great house. He had a lab all of his own and nearly complete freedom to perform any experiment that came into his head.
The Gemini Corporation was into all kinds of science. Much of it was top secret, for the government, but there were lots of things that made its way into the public sector. Outside the building that Shaw was in were two giant circles and beneath that were more labs. This was the giant collider that sent particles hurtling at each other to then collide and break into even smaller particles. Scientists were looking for the so-called "God" particle.
That was one of the most public experiments, the one that got written about in the big magazines and major newspapers. Inside the giant building in the middle of the campus were dozens and dozens of other experiments that the public never heard about. Some of the ones Shaw had heard muttered about at lunch and around the building made his blood run cold.
Lance Shaw had been recruited with some fanfare. The CEO himself had shown up at his desk on his first day, as Shaw stood in his lab with his orientation binder and name badge all shiny and brand new, and shaken his hand. He was told, repeatedly, that they were expecting big things out of him.
Shaw had been thinking about starting experiments to find a new way to grow plants bigger and to produce more fruit even in arid temperatures, but that had quickly grown boring to him. Instead, as he stared at the bright, shiny, new equipment, and then looked out at the circles of the collider, another idea formed.
Dr. Shaw had spent quite a bit of time rooting around online for information about genetically altered food. That had led him to a series of conspiracy theory websites. There were many who felt that genetically altered food was a source of mind control with the government behind it all.
Once you went down that rabbit hole there was a long, long way to go before you hit bottom. It wasn't long before Shaw had found himself enraptured with documents about alternate dimensions.
The theory was that this universe was not the only one. Just inches away, separated by meta-physical barriers, were other alternate dimensions and parallel
universes. The entire universe was really like an onion and that if you peeled back one dimension, there were other dimensions and on and on and on, perhaps to infinity.
Sometimes, sometimes, those barriers got weak and one dimension leaked into the next.
The thought had sunk deep into Shaw's subconscious and it would not let go. The other dimensions, it was theorized, just vibrated at a different frequency from our own. If vibrations could be created in a localized area, he thought, a portal into one of these other dimensions could form.
What would be the practical application of such a thing? What if the other dimensions were nothing? Maybe there was nothing going on in them. But what if you actually went back in time? What if entering an alternate dimension would allow you to enter at one place, travel what felt like a short distance there, but then emerge in your home dimension in a far away place. That could potentially make teleportation real. What if there were older and more advanced civilizations? What could be learned from them?
So, after weeks of letting his vegetable experiments sit unattended, Shaw stood in his lab and admired the equipment he had assembled and gathered. It had taken weeks of him cajoling, asking people about this stuff, begging, borrowing, promising and sometimes just outright stealing, and now here it was. It had taken a lot of lying and massaging the truth to people who knew that he was working on vegetables to get a radio wave generator and other equipment to alter the vibrations of the very air in the lab.
Shaw had taken more weeks putting the equipment together. The various frequency generators and machines meant to vibrate this dimension were set up in a circle in the middle of the lab. He smiled, thinking that this was like his own version of the collider. Perhaps it would pay off even more than the giant buried thing outside.
No one else knew what he was doing, as far as he could tell. However, his privacy was something Shaw did not take for granted. At Gemini, despite their generosity, big smiles and bigger promises, there was always the feeling that someone was watching you. There were more rumors that as soon as something groundbreaking was discovered the higher-ups came in and took it away, sending it off somewhere for military or government applications.
The Man From Taured Page 10