Dark Channel

by Ray Garton

  Jordan did not think it was the only important thing; not to Edmond Fiske, anyway. He suspected there was another reason behind Fiske’s interest in the Alliance.

  “Why do you ask?”

  “Just curious,” Jordan said. “That’s all.”

  “Nothing wrong with that. Listen, Jordan, I’m a little pressed for time. Did you drive here?”

  “Took a cab.”

  “Let me give you a lift. We’ll talk more in the car.”

  In front of the restaurant, a black limousine glimmered in the sunlight. The uniformed chauffeur opened the door for them; Fiske got in first and Jordan followed.

  The sounds of the city were not allowed inside the limousine; sunlight and curious eyes were barred by the dark smoky glass. They sat opposite one another, Jordan facing the rectangle of thick glass through which he saw the driver get behind the wheel. The driver’s black sunglasses beneath the bill of his cap were reflected in the rearview mirror.

  “Where to?” Fiske asked.

  Jordan gave him the address of the office and Fiske repeated it into an intercom on the divider over his shoulder.

  “You mentioned my license earlier,” Jordan said. “It does expire soon. Why is that important?”

  “Can’t you guess. Were you going to renew it?”

  He was not. “Well, sometimes it can be a bit limiting. …”

  “Exactly. I don’t want you to be limited. For that, I could go back to the police. If you find it necessary to do something that your licensed status would prohibit, I don’t want you to hesitate. Of course, I don’t expect you to compromise your integrity, but I know there are things your license restricts that are otherwise legal. Barely legal, perhaps, but legal.”

  Fiske was right, and that was exactly why Jordan had no intention of renewing his license; he was tired of having his hands tied by a laminated card and a certificate.

  “Of course,” Fiske said, lighting another cigarette, “I don’t have to tell you that this should be handled with extreme confidentiality. The press seems to be fascinated by my every move. I’d hate to read about this in the papers.”

  “You said nothing was confidential.”

  He nodded with assurance. “This will be.”

  “If I take the case, I’ll need help. I’ll have to share certain facts with my operatives.”

  “I trust your judgment.” He watched Jordan for a moment, as if inspecting him. “You seem uncertain. Well, you don’t have to decide right now. I’ll be in town until tomorrow.” He removed a wallet from his back pocket and opened it. “Here, take this.” He handed over a small card. “When you’ve decided, call this number. They’ll contact me immediately and I’ll get right back to you. I’d like an answer within twenty-four hours.”

  As Jordan took the card, the limousine slowed to a stop. The ride had been so smooth and quiet, he’d forgotten they were in a car.

  “Here we are,” Fiske said.

  The door opened and the chauffeur stood patiently beside the car.

  “It’s been a pleasure talking with you, Jordan. I hope you’ll call me soon with good news.”

  “You’ll hear from me tonight.”

  “Good.” As Jordan started to leave the car, Fiske said, “Oh, by the way. Hester Thorne is giving a free seminar tonight at the Sheraton. You might want to attend, just to have a look. Call me afterward and let me know what you think.”

  “I’ll do that,” Jordan said, then got out and headed into his building.

  6.

  The ballroom in the Sheraton was warm and growing slightly humid from the noisy crowd shuffling around to find seats. Soft music played over the PA system. It was the sort of white noise that record stores categorized as New Age music; not music so much as an audible mist that throbbed with something resembling a beat, touched with the faintest ghost of a melody, soothing but empty.

  A large flower arrangement gave a burst of color to each end of the stage up front and the backdrop depicted a luminescent Mount Shasta crowned with an airbrushed rainbow. In the center of the stage stood a dais decorated with the emblem of the Alliance and on the floor before it were several white cushions; below that, four steps led from the stage to the ballroom floor.

  Jordan and Marvin stood just inside the door, out of the way of the people still filing in. They were all ages, from small children holding their parents’ hands to stooped senior citizens leaning on canes and walkers.

  “Pulls in just about everybody, doesn’t she?” Marvin said, raising his voice to be heard above the music and the drone of voices and laughter. He removed a pack of cigarettes from his coat pocket and shook one out.

  “Looks that way. What do you say we get a seat before they’re—”

  “Excuse me, sir.”

  Jordan and Marvin turned to the man who had appeared to their left. He wore an expensive-looking cream-colored suit and stood with his hands joined behind his back, smiling as he spoke.

  “We ask that you smoke in the lobby only,” the man said.

  “Yeah, sure,” Marvin said with a nod, putting the cigarette back.

  Jordan saw a plastic name tag on the man’s lapel; it sported the Alliance emblem and his name, STEWART. His tie tack was a small crystal cut in the shape of an eye.

  “May I help you find a seat?” Stewart asked, still smiling.

  “No, thanks,” Jordan replied. “We’re fine.”

  As they moved into the crowd and toward the stage, Jordan noticed others dressed exactly as Stewart, all of them smiling like shoe salesmen. None were especially tall, but although it was not readily apparent, Jordan could tell they all had sturdy, muscular builds beneath their creamy suits.

  They found two seats together in the middle of the fourth row from the front and scooted in, stepping over feet, excusing themselves politely.

  Neither man looked himself. Marvin wore an old brown corduroy sport coat that had been hanging in his closet since he was in the real-estate business, a pair of tan chinos, and his old pair of horn-rim glasses. Jordan had on a pair of John Lennon specs with clear lenses, a baggy white sweater, and blue jeans; his brown hair was combed straight back, slicked down with a little mousse.

  “Sheesh, you look like Mickey Rourke,” Marvin had said earlier when they met in the hotel lounge.

  “Just as long as I don’t look like me.”

  They sat in their chairs, silently watching the people around them, those wearing crystals on chains around their necks with the light of belief bright in their eyes, and others who moved with the caution of interested skeptics.

  The young men in vanilla ice-cream suits quickened their pace in seating those still wandering around the ballroom as the music faded.

  As the lights dimmed, the voices silenced, and soon the only lights in the room were directed toward the stage.

  They waited there in the darkness as the room cooled down a bit.

  Hester Thorne hurried onto the stage toward the dais to a sudden storm of applause, arms raised high. She wore a shimmering white gown—it looked more like a comfortable house robe to Jordan—and the flowing sleeves bunched up around her shoulders, revealing the pale smooth skin of her arms until she lowered them, clutched the sides of the dais, flashed a beaming smile and said, “Good evening, sweet souls!”

  The applause rose until she waved for it to stop.

  “I can’t tell you,” she said, “how happy I am to see so many of you here tonight. It gives me hope. It gives this world hope! First of all, I want you to know that there is only one truly important person here tonight, a person overflowing with unrealized potential and untapped power. A person who can find happiness, fulfillment, and success with help from no one, from nothing. That person … that powerhouse … that one true god … is you.”

  Hester Thorne wasted no time in gripping her audience. She spoke with animation
and breathless enthusiasm, her words gaining momentum as she spoke, the cylindrical crystal that rested between her breasts catching the light as she moved and flashing like a diamond. Seeing her in person for the first time, Jordan understood her success; unlike most of the others like her—transchannels and crystal healers and meditation gurus—Hester Thorne had tremendous charisma all by herself, without the aid of any New Age trappings. She hadn’t even mentioned Orrin yet, and the audience was huddled in her open palm.

  “I am not here,” she went on, “to share with you my philosophy or worldview, but the truth that has been given to me. And the admission to this seminar tonight is free because the truth is free. It will fall on many deaf ears, but to anyone who pursues this truth I give this warning: learning to live the truth is not free. There is a price. It is not entirely a monetary price—” she chuckled good-naturedly, “—although nothing of true value is free. It is a life price.”

  She removed the microphone from its stand and walked around the dais to the edge of the stage.

  “Your life must change, you must take a new path, and leave behind everything you now know to evolve into a higher, more aware, complete being. You must find the god within you and release it. And when you do—”

  She spread her fingers wide, holding the microphone between flat palms, then—

  “—magic will be yours—”

  —she slowly pulled her hands away and the microphone remained suspended before her, steady, motionless.

  “—and miracles will happen. But before I go on, I must tell you this. Everything you have been taught up to this moment—”

  She plucked the microphone from the air.

  “—is wrong.”

  Jordan had read of the tricks she performed during seminars and personal appearances. She never spoke of them, explained or defended them—although her critics were quick to point out her blatant chicanery and juvenile parlor tricks—she simply performed them inconspicuously as she spoke, almost as if she wasn’t aware of them herself.

  Returning to the dais and replacing the microphone, Hester Thorne went on to tell how Orrin came into her life, speaking at a slower pace now, calm and soothing.

  She told of the nights she was awakened from a sound sleep by a distant voice.

  “At first, I thought I was losing my mind,” she said, “maybe having some sort of breakdown. I had been under a great deal of strain in the years preceding my first contact with Orrin and still was. My son, who had been born severely … impaired … deformed … was failing and required constant care. My husband was under a lot of stress, too, both at home and at work, and he was growing more and more unstable. So I was in dire need of what Orrin had to give me.”

  The voice of Orrin became clearer as time passed and Hester realized he was telling her to go to Mount Shasta.

  “As it turned out,” she said, “I had spent my honeymoon in Grover, which is just below Mount Shasta. I was raised just a few hours south of there and had grown up admiring that beautiful mountain from a distance. I would spend hours in my backyard staring at it, thinking about it, almost as if I were drawn to it. But I had never been there, so my husband arranged a week in Grover for our honeymoon. Even then, I had no idea of the spiritual awakening that was going on in that area, and continues to go on. People yearning for the meaning of our existence here and hungry for communication with our galactic neighbors were gathering there long before I ever arrived.

  “At Orrin’s request—still half believing I might be crazy—I returned to the small town with my son, who was almost too infirm to travel, but whom I could not leave behind. And there, my communication with Orrin was crystal clear, almost as if he were sitting right in front of me holding a conversation. But he wasn’t. He was speaking inside me.”

  There, she learned that Orrin had had countless incarnations as a philosopher and warrior, both on earth and on distant worlds, in cultures totally alien to any that had come and gone on this world.

  “Throughout his evolution,” she continued, “Orrin has grown in knowledge and awareness. He has seen the endless procession of lies and subtle distortions of the truth that plague this—and all—planets. But only one truth remains. It outlives all the falsehoods, but it does not always defeat them. Throughout the universe there have been worlds populated by beings who have either ignored or refused to accept this truth, and as a result, they have died away. Ceased to exist. Not from crime and disease and war, but from the ignorance that results in all of those things. And I am here tonight to tell you—and you are here, sweet souls, to learn—that this earth is fast becoming one of those worlds. A victim of ignorance. But. It’s not too late to stop it.”

  She paused for a while, as if to give her audience time to absorb what she’d said.

  Jordan glanced around him and saw only attentive eyes facing front, steady and undiverted. The room was solid with silence.

  “Until now,” she said quietly, her voice soft as sun-warmed grass, “Orrin’s message has been one of peace and encouragement, promoting community among all reasoning beings in the universe. But in every lighted place, there are shadows.”

  She lowered her head for a moment and when she lifted it again, her face had changed, become troubled, worried.

  “My most recent communications with Orrin have been touched by that shadow. He has told me things that are … unpleasant. And even, at times, frightening. They are things I would rather not hear, but must hear. And you must hear them, too. I have no idea what Orrin will say when he speaks to us tonight, but some of it may be unsettling to you. I urge you, please, do not be discouraged. He may bring to our attention some negative things, but only because he knows we can prevent them. We can create the future, a new, bright, and warm future for this earth and for all humanity in this level of existence and those yet to come. Do not be disturbed; be enlightened. Later, we’ll have a question-and-answer session and talk more about these things, but now, if you will be patient with me for a few moments, I will open the channel. And Orrin will speak with us.”

  She took a lapel microphone from the dais, snapped it on, and stepped around to the cushions on the floor, where she settled in a lotus-like position, leaned back her head, closed her eyes, and took a long deep breath. After letting it out slowly, she inhaled again, and this time the breath was louder, thicker, more guttural; her shoulders rose high, stopped, lowered so slowly the movement was almost invisible, then rose again with a third, and deeper, breath.

  As Hester Thorne’s breaths echoed in waves over the still audience, Jordan realized something, then marveled at it. Without any preliminary explanation, she had begun talking about channeling an age-old being who knew the “Truth” as if everyone in the room would accept it as fact without question or doubt. There was no self-effacing prologue, no “Now, I know you might find this hard to believe, but …” She had simply told her audience that everything they had learned up to now was wrong, then had begun talking about Orrin.

  And yet, when Jordan looked around him again, there were no doubtful looks on the faces bathed in the glow of the stage lights. They were simply watching, silently and with interest, some with anticipation, as if they had no doubt they were about to hear from an invisible, immortal entity.

  As she inhaled and exhaled slowly, her breaths growing in volume and length, Hester Thorne’s face softened, relaxed, took on a tranquility that all but glowed from her alabaster skin.

  It went on for several long minutes: in deeply, shoulders lifting, breasts swelling, then out with a long deflating sigh.

  Jordan leaned toward Marvin to whisper some smartass remark—Live! On stage! Hester Thorne breathes! or something like that—but before he could speak—

  —the breathing stopped.

  She was perfectly still on the cushions for a moment, then her body jolted, as if in pain, and the tendons along her neck stood out like piano wires taut beneath her ski
n. Her chin dropped and eyes opened, revealing only rolled-back whites and her throat gurgled, then—

  —a long miserable groan rolled up from deep in her chest and her body quaked, back rigid, as if she had been entered violently and unexpectedly by a man of unaccommodating proportions. Her hands slapped onto the cushions, bunched into fists, nails clawing the soft white material, and a whisper of gasps and murmurs rose from the audience.

  It happened again, then a third time, that orgasmic convulsion that flowed over her, liquid—no, gelatinous—and then her eyes rolled back into place and she faced her audience, opened her mouth and began to sing. It was a single high note, unwavering, in a clear and steady voice. Her voice.