Signalz

by F. Paul Wilson

  The harm was in getting involved with a co-worker. Highly unprofessional. And, bottom line, Hari considered herself a professional.

  And even if they weren’t co-workers, he didn’t recognize Deputy Dog or the B-52s.

  Hey, Nineteen had started playing in her head again.

  “I switched cars first thing this morning,” she said. “Deputy Dog—if he’s really a deputy at all—might remember our Taurus if he sees it again. Also, the Tahoe here has off-road capability.”

  Donny didn’t seem to be listening. “Can we get some coffee?”

  “You read my mind.”

  Hari already had a couple of cups percolating through her system, but she could always do with more.

  They stopped at the same strip mall as yesterday. Hari got four coffees at the espresso shop while Donny hit the Taco Bell for breakfast Crunchwraps, whatever those might be. Then on to the FedEx lot where they set up watch on the Sirocco building from the same spot as yesterday.

  The Crunchwraps turned out to be delicious, but she’d barely finished hers before the trucks started rolling, each tractor hauling a new semi.

  “Good thing we got here early,” Donny said.

  Hari started the Tahoe and followed the third truck out of the industrial park.

  “We’re not gonna wait for the whole convoy?” he said.

  Hari shook her head. “I’m operating on the assumption they’re going back to Norum Hill. We’re going to get there way ahead of them, even before Deputy Dog arrives. He can’t keep us off the mountain if we’re already there.”

  “Yeah, but he can kick us off when he finds us.”

  “Not if he doesn’t know we’re there.”

  “I sense that someone has a plan.”

  “You sense correctly. Let’s just hope it works.”

  She stayed with the convoy until it reached 787, then passed the leaders and raced north to Route 2 where she pushed her speed as much as she dared until they reached Norum Hill. No sign of a sheriff’s unit as they wound their way to the top.

  “Okay,” Donny said as the tires crunched across the gravel of the summit parking area. “We’re here. Now what?”

  Hari kept the Tahoe moving toward the cell tree at the far northern end of the lot as she said, “We go over the edge.”

  “No-no-no!” Donny cried, slamming his hands against the dashboard. “Are you crazy?”

  “Possibly.”

  Yesterday, as she’d driven the perimeter of the lot in search of the missing trailers, she’d noticed how the northern end had a gentle grade off the edge, easing down to a line of brush before the trees took over. Whoever had flattened the summit a generation or two ago must have pushed the excess earth off the edge.

  Hari bumped the Tahoe over one of the low, concrete parking stops by the cell tree and eased down that grade, stopping in the low brush thirty or forty feet below the summit.

  “This is why I wanted four-wheel drive,” she said.

  Donny had turned in his seat and was staring back up at the summit. “But he’ll see us here.”

  “A good chance he won’t. The road up is on the other side of the hill, so we’re not visible from there. I suspect Deputy Dog drives up to the summit and checks the lot. If he sees anybody, he shoos them off with some lame excuse. If it’s empty, he turns around and goes back down the road and stations himself where he stopped us yesterday.”

  “Let’s hope you’re right.”

  “If he drives the lot perimeter, we’re busted, but I’m betting he doesn’t.”

  As they sat with the windows open and listened, Donny fired up his tablet.

  “Hey, a new signal report.”

  “From that Burbank at the Allard?”

  “Yeah. Gives me an idea.”

  “An idea…it’s good to know you’re open to new experiences.”

  “Ha-ha.” He gave her a pointed look. “More so than you, that’s for sure.”

  “Are you carrying a grudge about last night?”

  “Last night?” he said, all innocence. “What happened last night?”

  “Nothing. Absolutely nothing.” Time to change the subject. “What’s your idea?”

  “The report gives the coordinates of each frequency it mentions. I’m just wondering if there’s one nearby. First let me get our own coordinates…”

  He tapped around while Hari kept her ears alert for the sound of tires on the gravel above and behind them.

  “I’ll be damned,” he muttered. “There’s one right here on Norum Hill.”

  “One of those signals?”

  Hari found that unsettling. An electromagnetic impulse beaming out of nowhere and striking the Earth right where she was sitting.

  “Exactly where?” she said.

  “Somewhere down the hill a ways.”

  “You think it’s connected with where they’re hiding the trailers?”

  A shrug. “How can I say? Might just be an oddball coincidence.”

  “Or it might not. I—” She held up a hand as she heard a crunching sound.

  Definitely tires on the parking area gravel—crunching briefly, then fading away.

  “I think that was him,” she said, not exactly sure why she was whispering. She slapped Donny on his shoulder. “Let’s go.”

  “Go where? The trucks can’t be here yet.”

  “I want to see if we can find a vantage point that shows us where they leave the trailers.”

  Keeping below the level of the summit, they made their way through the trees on the south face to where they had a view of a short segment of the mountain road. They crouched and waited. Soon the roar of tractor engines fighting the upgrade echoed through the air, but no trucks rolled into sight. And then the engine noise faded to silence.

  “What the hell?” Donny said. “Where’d they go?”

  Hari was wondering the same thing. “Maybe they turned their engines off?”

  “Truckers don’t turn off their engines until they’re done for the day—less stress on the diesel to leave it running.”

  “And you know this how?”

  “I just know it.”

  She shook her head sadly. “But you don’t know Deputy Dog.”

  “And you don’t know lolz and slime. But whatever, I’m telling you these guys don’t turn off their engines.” He rose. “I’m going down there.”

  Hari pulled him back. “You’re doing no such thing. The drivers came back down the hill yesterday, they’ll go back down today. And when they do, we’ll be close behind. Today we get some answers.”

  Half an hour later the rumble of the engines returned—not abruptly, but gradually, swelling to a roar.

  “Now!” Hari said. “Back to the car.”

  They hurried to the Tahoe. Its four-wheel drive pulled them up the grade and back onto the gravel.

  “Can that tablet of yours show us how close we are to the local signal?”

  “Sure. I can compare our GPS coords to the signal’s.”

  “Do it, then. I’m betting the trucks and signal are connected.”

  She took it slow from there, virtually coasting down the incline. The trucks had departed but the tire marks on the pavement left no doubt where they’d turned on and off the mountain road.

  “Same place as yesterday!” Donny said, hammering the dashboard with a fist. “Same dead end!”

  “We’re missing something,” Hari said, cringing at the obviousness of the statement. “How close are we to the signal?”

  Donny checked his tablet. “Holy crap. We’re almost on top of it.”

  Pretty much what she’d expected. “I’m going in.”

  No walking this time. She turned the Tahoe into the gap in the trees and crept ahead along the well-worn ruts. But instead of running into the wall of solid rock they’d faced yesterday, they found a wide opening through the granite.

  “Okay,” Donny said. “This is spooky. How does this happen? And by the way, this spot matches exactly with the signal coords.”
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  Of course it did. Hari made no comment as she kept the Tahoe rolling forward.

  Donny’s voice jumped an octave. “We’re going in?”

  “If the trucks can do it, so can we. We go in, take a quick look, then haul our butts back out.”

  She needed to know what was in there. She couldn’t leave until she did.

  Driving through the divide was like threading a narrow canyon—a dark canyon, so dark she had to turn on the Tahoe’s headlights.

  “How long is this thing?” Donny said.

  Before Hari could respond, the stone walls fell away and they emerged from the passage into dim light. She slammed on the brakes when she saw what lay ahead.

  “Oh, my god!” Donny cried, his voice reaching for a scream. “Get us outa here, Hari! Get us the fuck outa here!”

  BARBARA

  I opened my eyes and stared at the glowing red numbers on the bedside clock: 11:47. I jerked my head up for a better look.

  What?

  Yes. A quarter till noon. I’d overslept. Not that I had anything in particular to be up and about for. Well, Ellie, of course, but she wanted to be alone, so no use in getting up early for her.

  But I never slept this late. Never. Plus I’d fallen asleep in my clothes. I must have been more exhausted than I’d thought.

  I threw off the comforter and padded to the kitchen where I put the kettle on for tea. While the water heated, I checked Ellie’s room to see if anything had changed. Out of habit, I knocked before entering, just in case she’d come back through the passage.

  “Ellie?”

  As expected, no answer, so I pushed through and stepped inside. I glanced at the arch of her construction—the same dark opening as yesterday—then at the window.

  The globes were still there but now they were crammed full of dark shapes and countless frantically wriggling legs. I cried out and recoiled, backing against the door and slamming it shut.

  Vibrations from the slam caused the globes to jiggle, and then…

  I watched in horror as they loosened from the sill and tumbled in a cascade to the floor on the far side of the bed where I couldn’t see them.

  In the ensuing silence I reached behind me for the doorknob but before turning it I realized Ellie had entrusted these globes to me. I needed to check on them. Just a peek. Carefully, I stepped up onto her bed and edged toward the far side.

  Oh, God, they were out. The globes had smashed and the floor was a writhing, undulating carpet of black wriggling forms the size of marbles, marbles with legs, so many legs, and they were…they were eating the broken fragments of the globes.

  Slowly, carefully, I backed off the bed and stepped toward the door, but before I reached it they were everywhere, swarming over the bed and under it and around it and flowing toward me in a wriggling black wave. I was barefoot but even with shoes I’d have been defenseless. They surrounded me, blocking my route to the door, and as they closed in I screamed.

  And then a voice echoed down the passage.

  “That is my mother and she is not to be touched!”

  The black swarm froze.

  And then the voice said, “Come to me now. Come to me, my kiddlies.”

  The black wriggling wave turned en masse and raced through the arch into the passage where Ellie waited.

  I stood frozen, awestruck, horrorstruck.

  Kiddlies…she’d called them her kiddlies.

  And then I screamed again as the boiling kettle let out a high-pitched whistle.

  HARI

  “Wh-where are we?” Hari said as she stared through the windshield at the alien vista.

  “I don’t know!” Donny said, the words still in his upper register as they came tumbling out, “but this isn’t Earth, so turn around and get us the fuck outa here!”

  That was Hari’s first instinct as well—get out. And she would do exactly that. But not just yet.

  “Hold on, okay? Just hold on and get a grip.”

  They’d passed from bright, late-morning daylight to some sort of purple twilight, from a forested hillside to a huge, broad, bare, mountain-rimmed plateau. They’d answered the question of the semis’ whereabouts—at least a hundred were arrayed before them—but Hari had no inkling as to her whereabouts.

  “What is that?” she said, pointing to the giant, red-glowing orb that hung over the darkening horizon.

  “I’m gonna guess that’s what passes for the sun here,” Donny said, his voice shaking. “Wherever ‘here’ might be. Hari, please—”

  “That’s not a sun.”

  “The sun’s a star and that’s a star—either a red dwarf that we’re very close to, or a red giant that’s far away. I’m going with close-to-the-dwarf because we haven’t frozen yet.”

  Red giant…red dwarf…they meant next to nothing to Hari…terms she’d seen in the Science section of the Tuesday Times. Astronomy-geek talk. The star out there took up a full thirty degrees of the sky and glowed a bright crimson—not bright enough, though, to keep Hari’s eyes off it.

  She said, “Okay…say you’re right. How did we get to another planet?”

  “Through that fucking passage, which we should be going back through right now!”

  “But all the trailers are here. Septimus is hiding them on another planet?”

  “Okay, maybe not on another planet per se, but definitely not on our Earth. Maybe this is another version of Earth. One I don’t wish to stay on.”

  “‘Another version’?”

  “Yeah. The multiverse. An infinite number of alternate realities. Can we leave now?”

  Hari twisted in her seat to look back at the dark opening in the sheer rocky wall behind them. Then back to the trailers.

  “Just as soon as we see what’s inside those trailers.”

  With that she turned off the engine, pulled the keys from the ignition, and jumped out.

  Donny wailed, “Hariiiiii!”

  “If you check a tanker while I’m checking a freight load, we’ll be done in half the time and on our way.”

  Behind her a door slammed and Donny said, “I hate you!”

  Hari felt for him. Their situation was beyond frightening, surging into terrifying, mind-boggling, and way beyond, but she’d made this trip to find answers and she wasn’t leaving here without them.

  “Seriously,” Donny said as he caught up with her. “If we get out of this alive, I’m going to kill you.”

  She pointed to the nearest tanker. “See what’s in there.”

  She trotted to the rear of the closest semi and felt winded by the time she reached it. Was the air thinner here?

  She examined the rear swing doors where she found the lock shafts engaged but not padlocked.

  And why would they be? she thought. No one’s going to steal anything here.

  She grabbed the lever handle and swung it out, rotating the long shaft. It popped free and she tugged on the door, swinging it open to reveal neat rows of boxes stacked floor to ceiling. The light wasn’t great and so it took her a moment to decipher the printing on the sides. She backed away when she realized what it was.

  She called out to Donny. “Freeze-dried food!”

  Donny had opened a spigot on the bottom of a tanker and clear liquid was gushing out. He stuck a hand into the flow and raised it to his lips.

  “Water!”

  She shivered. The air was colder here. But no matter, she had all she needed to know.

  “Let’s get out of here!”

  But as they hurried back to the Tahoe she noticed something that damn near stopped her heart. Donny obviously noticed it too as they both simultaneously skidded to a halt.

  “Hey!” he said. “Where’s the opening?”

  The passage they’d come through was gone. The dark cleft in the mountainside had closed over and they now faced a wall of solid, unbroken rock.

  ERNST

  Ernst found Slootjes in the lodge basement, hunched over his desk, fairly engulfed in books and scrolls. The loremaster squin
ted up at him through a pair of bifocals.

  “I can tell by your expression you’ve read it,” he said.

  Ernst nodded. “It’s…harrowing.”

  Indeed. Charles Atkinson—if such a person truly existed—told his tale in a plain-spoken, matter-of-fact tone that compelled belief. Ernst looked for a place to drop the envelope with the damning memoir but every horizontal surface was occupied.

  “Just drop it on the floor,” Slootjes said.

  Ernst did that, then leaned over the desk.

  “Tell me you’ve debunked this travesty.”

  Ernst wanted nothing more than to hear a resounding Yes. Instead, Slootjes gave his head a slow, sad shake.

  “Just the opposite, I’m afraid.” He indicated a loose-leaf binder. “I checked with your grandfather’s reports to the Council and he often mentions a ‘Charles’ as being close to Tesla.”

  “Anyone working with Tesla at the time might have known of this Charles and impersonated him.”

  “True. But Atkinson’s dates regarding the Order’s takeover of the financing of the tower experiments jibe with the Council’s financial records.”

  “But—”

  “The Council kept its involvement secret, Ernst, and we know Tesla never went public with it. The records show they spent a considerable amount of money to keep Tesla going—to the tune of one hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars. Which sounds like a pittance these days, but when you adjust for inflation it comes to three and a half million. That’s what the Council poured into the Wardenclyffe project.”

  “So that part’s true,” Ernst said. “How did they justify the expense?”

  “According to the minutes of the Council meetings in 1903 and thereabouts, the members had read newspaper reports of strange occurrences that sounded like intrusions of Otherness in the Shoreham area along Long Island’s North Shore. They investigated and found good reason to believe that Tesla’s tower was not only transmitting wireless energy, but thinning the Veil as well. That was why they put up the money.”

  “And got nothing in return.”

  “You can’t blame them for thinking it a good investment. Look at this.”