The Silver Bridge

by Gray Barker

  An eternity seemed to pass before Keel’s tall, stooped outline reappeared. He glared at Woody across the fence.

  “You neglected to mention there’s a bull out there,” he said. It turned out that Keel had been reared on a farm near Perry, N.Y., and that he had later lived for two years in Spain where he had attended many bullfights. He knew that it was a serious mistake to run from a bull. So he stood his ground when the animal appeared, flashing his light directly into its eyes. The gambit worked. The bull stopped a few feet away from him and the two glared at each other. Keel said he slowly walked toward the animal, rather than away from it, went past and headed slowly for the fence again. The bull followed at a respectable distance. Keel jumped over the fence and rejoined us.

  At least some of the lights appeared to be coming from a distant highway on the other side of the valley, he reported, and were auto headlights flickering through the trees along the top of the ridge. This did not explain the small lights that seemed to be directly in the field, though, he admitted. He also wondered if maybe the cattle weren’t the shadowy forms we had seen earlier.

  We returned to the house, but still stood outside looking for more lights. Suddenly I pointed at the sky. Derenberger either had a lot of luck going for him that night, or some weird otherworldly matters were truly transpiring. A large red globe, half the apparent size of a full moon, appeared. It would fade in, then vanish, fade in again and out. By that time, however, the haze was moving back in, and no doubt this represented some bright planet or star, distorted by the atmosphere.

  I believed John was quite skeptical of the additions to Derenberger’s original story, although, like myself, he probably viewed the initial contact account with an open mind. As we drove back to the motel, I hesitated to ask his opinion, for I didn’t want to pin him down. Besides, he had lapsed into a silence and probably was thinking out the whole affair.

  However, I couldn’t help bring up an odd part of the story.

  “I don’t think you buy it, John, but there are little things that make you wonder. For instance that strange little detail of the ordinary bunk beds that he saw on board the craft. And the “CB”-type radio he described as being used by the space men. These were things Woody has often seen right here on Earth. Now if he were making up a science fiction story, surely he could dream up some weirder gadgetry to go with it.”

  John didn’t answer, as if he were still deeply wrapped in thought. I took my eyes off the road momentarily to glance at him. His eyes were turned straight ahead, and, as if noting I had seen the look on his face, he turned his head quickly, completely away from me. I had seen his expression for only a brief instant, and distinctly thought that I saw a look of terror on his countenance.

  By that time we were back at the motel, and John was once again his normal self. As we had coffee, he began at last to speak.

  “If the basic story the witness tells is substantially true, that wouldn’t worry me too much—except, possibly, a disappointment at the lack of intelligence Indrid Cold and his ilk demonstrate. After all, they mean us no harm, are all sweetness and light, and so on. Of course, if the witness is simply trying to make up a good story he wants to sell, that’s no great worry either, except for a black mark on the world’s literary history.”

  He grew silent again, and I chuckled at his sardonic remark. Then I tried to decipher what he was getting at.

  “John, level with me. There is something, somewhere in Derenberger’s story that shakes you up, isn’t there?”

  “Not exactly. But I think you’re on the right track when you mention the somewhat glaring inconsistencies, such as the ‘CB’ radio and the bunk beds, apparently Earth made. I think it would be most disturbing, however, if, say the contacts had been real, but that Indrid Cold, or whoever he actually was, had been deliberately lying to Woody.”

  We finished the coffee. I was tired, and I could see that he was feeling the results of his long trip. I should take leave of him and let him get some rest.

  But I decided to take the ufological bull by the horns and bring up the remark that Jim had made.

  “Frankly, John,” I began, “Jim and I had a long talk about you. He had one impression about you which I also get. I somehow feel you have some theories or some information you’re holding out on all of us. Now I presume you’re writing a book, and I probably will write one too about the Mothman cases and all the incredible Ohio valley incidents. I know if you have something really new and fresh, you wouldn’t want to blow it in front of some other writer or editor…”

  “I am writing a book, which I am tentatively calling Operation Trojan Horse, but that isn’t the real reason I don’t reveal everything. If that were the reason, I would tell you everything, because I know you’re ethical.

  “Believe me, Gray, something fantastic is going on. Something that not even the hardcore UFO buffs are ready to believe. You’ve been in this crazy business for years and you know that there are many wild and unpublicized aspects of this thing. Things which simply do not support the whole extraterrestrial idea.

  “When I first started digging into this I realized that there were no real ‘hard facts’ or genuine evidence. The whole extraterrestrial idea was built up by wishful thinkers on speculation and circumstantial evidence. There are hundreds of bits and pieces that just don’t fit that idea. Once I understood this, I tried to find a broader concept into which all the pieces could be fitted. So I had to literally start from scratch and work out some radical new methods for investigating these things.

  “I’ve given up all of my other work and have been spending my full time on this. I’ve been going into debt and it hasn’t been easy but it’s about time that somebody really attacked this mystery from every angle. I think I’ve got the key now, but it is going to take a lot of hard work to prove anything. In the meantime, I have to keep a lot of my findings quiet. First of all, not many people are willing to believe it. Secondly, if I reveal some of these things prematurely a lot of crackpots and screwballs will tailor their own stories to fit my findings. I’ve discovered that there are many small, seemingly insignificant details in stories from all over the world which actually correlate and corroborate each other. I’m more interested in these little details than in the endless descriptions of funny flying objects.

  “Frankly, I’ve concluded that the objects really aren’t very important to all of this. There are other factors which are far more important. Those are the factors I’m digging out and documenting and, when the time comes, I’ll be revealing these things in very small doses.”

  He paused and lit the pipe which was nearly always dangling from his mouth.

  “There are a great many contradictions,” I admitted, “but how can one man ever put the whole puzzle together?”

  “That’s the problem, Gray.” He puffed thoughtfully. “I suspect that the UFO buffs and many of the serious researchers like yourself have allowed themselves to be misled and diverted by the controversies and nonsense surrounding this subject. They’ve worked harder at fighting the Air Force than at investigating UFOs. Groups like NICAP have dedicated themselves to compiling anecdotes rather than facts. They’ve smothered themselves with what seems like a hopeless cause—trying to prove that UFOs not only exist, but that they come from outer space. You’d think that after twenty years of vain effort they would come to realize that the outer space answer is either partially or is completely erroneous. It’s impossible to prove, and very little observational data supports it.”

  “But if they aren’t from outer space, where could they be from?” I pressed, intrigued.

  “That’s the sticky part,” he continued. “They seem to be environmental, yet under intelligent control. I’ve done a lot of historical research and discovered that these things were as numerous in 1866 as they were in 1966. In fact, a man named William Denton in Massachusetts claimed a contactee experience very similar to Derenberger’s back in 1866. He wrote several books about it.”

  “What
do you mean by ‘environmental’, though?”

  “I mean that they seem to have always been here—that they co-exist with us somehow. Remember, in the bible the prophet Zechariah recounts a conversation with an ‘angel’, and describes seeing a ‘flying roll’. The angel pointed it out to him and told him, ‘That is the curse that goeth forth over the whole Earth.’ That curse is still with us, Gray.”

  It was not a new idea, of course, but Keel seemed to be able to articulate it in remarkably convincing terms. His research was impressive and much of it was certainly unique. I could see that he was looking at the subject from a broad, overall viewpoint rather than concentrating on random lights-in-the-sky as so many other researchers were doing. He spoke knowledgeably of human history and the apparent role UFOs had played in mythology and legend in all civilizations.

  “But the thing that is really beginning to bother me, Gray,” he continued soberly, “is that I’m developing a gnawing suspicion that the Air Force has been right all along—and has been telling us part of the truth all along. After all, they’ve always claimed that there was no evidence of extraterrestrial origin, and so on. If I jumped into print with this kind of conclusion, all the buffs would scream that I’ve been ‘silenced’ or ‘bought off’ or some such nonsense. But I’ve got to admit that the Air Force’s position makes more sense to me every day. Maybe the government has always realized that the ‘truth’ can’t be proven, and that few people would believe it anyway. So they’ve done the only thing they could do: they’ve tried to play the whole thing down and dismiss it. If UFOs were around in Zechariah’s time, and in 1866, they’ll probably be around in 2066, too—and be just as aloof of us as they’ve always been. The UFO buffs keep waiting for them to land on the White House lawn. I don’t think that’s ever going to happen. Instead, people like Zechariah, Denton and Derenberger will continue to undergo wild experiences which can’t be proven and which few people will want to believe. And guys like you and I will spend our lives running around trying to find all the pieces to a puzzle which doesn’t seem to have any definite shape or borders.”

  I regretted that the intriguing conversation was ending as we paid the check. I yawned, looked at my watch and only then realized how late it was.

  “If your ideas are valid, John,” I added jokingly, “don’t be surprised if there’s a knocking at your door tonight and three men in black attack you with a billy club.”

  “I can’t be bothered. That bull wore me out.” He grinned. “If the M.I.B.* show up, I’ll send them over to your room.”

  *M.I.B.: An abbreviation employed by Keel for “Men In Black”, yet also used by him in a wider context to denote many different forms of interference with UFO witnesses and researchers. For instance, Keel reports that mysterious people who attempt to silence UFO witnesses are not always dressed in black suits. Some, for example, have impersonated U.S. Air Force officers. See also Chapter 10.—G.B.

  CHAPTER 9

  THE GOLDEN BALL

  In Ripley, Janet Svenson performed her final duty of the afternoon as she witnessed the closing and locking of the heavy bank vault door. Mr. Willett performed the short operation with what seemed to be an even greater ceremony and preciseness than usual. Perhaps it was because of the unusual and intriguing object resting inside.

  John W. White brought the object to the bank shortly before closing time, and with it an even more unusual story.

  On the night that Woodrow Derenberger first met Indrid Cold, the small city of Ripley, located about 30 miles south of Parkersburg, had its own visitation of unidentified flying objects. Although the sightings were unspectacular and consisted only of strange lights in the sky, White, a resident in the vicinity of Cedar Lakes Drive, believed the saucers had left a highly valuable calling card.

  White handed the heavy object to Janet’s boss. It gleamed and sparkled under the fluorescent lights. Two of his children had found it and carried it into the house. He believed it had dropped from one of the unidentified objects. To have fallen from such great height, it was remarkably undamaged—in fact it was completely undented. He believed it had struck the branches of a tree, which broke its fall.

  He inspected it closely. It was apparently made of high quality gold! It measured 12 inches in circumference, or just a fraction under that.

  After the ball was safely placed in the bank vault, White confided additional information to Mr. Willett and his secretary. He had taken it to Charleston, the state capital, from which he had just returned.

  “I took it to three jewlers and dealers in gold. They analyzed it and all of them said the three-eighths-inch outer coating is 24 karat gold.”

  But there the mystery only began. When heated to 1260 degrees, the ball turned red hot, but as it cooled it returned to its natural color. One jewler ruined three drilling bits when he tried to penetrate the inner metal.

  “Tests showed,” he added, “that the inner portion is definitely magnetic. The outer coating is not, however.”

  Nobody had challenged his ownership so far, and he figured that the ball belonged to him by the rule of finders keepers. He hoped to get in touch with some metallurgical experts who could determine the composition of the center. It also probably was composed of some rare and valuable metal.

  Mr. White’s account of the strange lights and the falling of the golden ball brought back to Janet’s memory an unusual experience she had rarely thought of for several years. She was only five when it occurred, and her mother termed it childish imagination. Yet the event remained in her mind with a vividness far more pronounced than many other of her childhood experiences.

  It happened in Norway in 1930, two years before her parents emigrated to the United States. She was returning from a neighbor’s house after dark, and had to cross a wide field in the course of the quarter mile distance.

  She dreaded this part of her walk, for from that vantage point the old graveyard at the top of the hill to the left of her home was in view. Her two brothers once declared they saw moving lights in the cemetery, and one of them had floated out of the small burial grounds and part of the way down the hill toward them, giving them quite a fright. She feared she also might see the lights.

  She turned her eyes to the ground and the moonlit path, determined not to look. Then from behind her, and seemingly from far away, came a low chanting. It had an unfamiliar rhythm which afterward she could never reconstruct in her mind—although she had often tried to remember it. It fascinated her, and she stopped walking, somehow unafraid, to look for its source.

  From the shadows of the woods emerged something incomprehensible. At that distance it appeared as an enormous moving gray mass. It was approaching her rapidly, and the chanting was becoming louder. Not even then did she have an impulse to flee. She was drawn, ecstatically, to the approaching thing, which appeared larger, almost as huge as the mountain it had emerged from. She must have been hypnotized, she later reasoned, by the strange voices.

  Now the mass was almost upon her, and she discerned it was composed of thousands of giant beings of inexplicable character. At first they seemed to be moving, up and down, over and under, like horses on a merry-go-round; but as they advanced she realized their movements were more complex than that. Although they moved upward and downward, they did so as if they were in an almost infinite variety of circular orbits, changing these orbits as they went. Some of them almost touched the ground, at their lowest points, while others moved high above her. They moved relentlessly, with the precision of clockwork, as if they were attached to a vast complex of shuttles and eccentric wheels within wheels.

  The cloud of beings was now enveloping and passing her. Although they did not touch her, as they moved all around and over her, she sensed they were not material creatures. They were pale gray, and looked more like statues than living things. Later they would remind her of the exaggerated elongation and stylization in painting and sculpture of the Middle Ages. They wore page boy-style haircuts, though she could not tell if
they were men or women. Their faces, though benign in appearance, were completely emotionless. They had long robes, which again, like statuary, did not flow or move.

  Only the beings which swung low in their orbits, close enough for her to touch them, displayed any irregularity from the rest of the monotonous progression. These held out clenched, inverted hands toward her, as if offering presents. In her fascination and lack of fear, she extended her open hands to receive what was apparently offered; however as each hand opened mechanically just above hers, nothing dropped from it. This imaginary, inexplicable presentation continued, along with the complex movement of the vast cloud of beings, for what seemed to be five or ten minutes, all the time accompanied by the chanting from some unseen source: for the lips of the beings were cold and immobile, as if carved from stone.

  Finally, the procession had passed; and it receded, just as it had arrived, turning back into the undefinable mass and moving across the mountain at the other side of the valley. As it departed the chanting dimmed, and only when she could no longer hear it did she move toward home. Still she was not frightened, and walked the rest of the distance home at her normal pace.

  For months afterward she would dream she heard the chanting. She would awaken, and for a few brief moments she could remember the rhythm. Then it would escape her, and she would listen for it again. She would close her eyes and hope to dream again about it.

  Janet wanted one more look at the golden ball before Mr. Willett closed the heavy vault door. She walked in front of the circular opening. There it was, in the corner, resting on a shelf, still glowing, even in the dim interior of the vault.

  She hoped Mr. White would not call for and remove it the next day, for she would like the opportunity to hold and examine it again, as she had done briefly when he handed it to her earlier that afternoon. As she had carefully supported it with both hands, a feeling of perfect calm had come over her. It must, indeed, have come from outer space—there was something undefinable about it that declared it was of another world.