She discerned another heart floating in the distance, enfolded and sputtering, on the verge of flickering away. “Jack!” she blazed happily. It was the Little Prince! She moved joyfully toward him, then stopped as he pulled away. He was so shy!
“Easy, little sleeper,” said Evlyn, holding her own form steadily. The light from within illuminated her essence like a Christmas tree angel. “He’s torn by the conflicts of his existence. It is not easy for him to be here with us. Fortunately, his connection to his mother calls him to join our efforts.”
“What conflicts?” asked Grace. Jack had rallied a bit and now hovered in place, glowing more steadily.
“He is born of two worlds, of both humans and alive ones, and can live fully in neither species’ domain. His heart is confused, stretched between levels, trembling with vibrations that do not easily align.”
Grace rolled with gentle greeting. “Hello, Jack,” she said. She watched him as he settled into his densest shape. He was taller than she, but much thinner, and his large, almond-shaped eyes were blacker than space.
“You need my help,” he said, his voice tremulous. “You need it.” Jack shared his heart briefly and pulled away. Grace understood.
“Are you afraid of the scary ones?” asked Grace.
“Yes.”
“Me too,” said Grace.
“Me too, eh?” said Evlyn. Dennis wagged his tail at her feet, pretending to be brave.
“Can we all be afraid together?” asked Grace. She knew that the scary people would return. Why else would the old ones stand guard?
“I think that’s what we’re supposed to do,” said Jack. He pulsed a wave of his whole being toward Grace and the woman of light.
Grace received his packet and all at once glimpsed his life. So that was it. She felt the truth of him. He was bound with obligations, resentments, and hopes to the beings who had created him, so was almost paralyzed with anger and grief, bereft of belonging in any realm and yearning always and only for an existence that had some meaning. Like himself, his mother, the one named Keeley whom Linda loved, had been used for purposes beyond her ken. So now Jack would help those whom she had helped. It was the only thing he could find to do that might ease his loneliness and anguish.
Grace let her heart expand, reaching out with love and kind acceptance. Jack flinched but held steady, allowing her soul to touch his own. She offered him the belonging of a single heart. Perhaps that would suffice. Jack’s heart may be confused, but she sensed that it was strong, and good, and that he wanted to help.
The scary ones would return. Strong hearts would have to be enough.
Chapter Fourteen
14.1
Cole Thomas’s house was easy to find but difficult to approach. Mary had no idea what Rice had stirred up here and she didn’t want to end up in the hands of the local constabulary. Especially when she didn’t really know why she’d come. Rice had initiated the standard containment procedures before heading to Maine, but Mary knew that local cops were the most difficult to control. Given the missing President, the car in the ditch, and the incident at the bakery, the reeves of this shire were likely on high alert. There had probably been a good number of UFO reports as well. And then there were friends and neighbors. The techs had reported some sort of commune or something. Those people did Neighborhood Watch like nobody’s business. With Cole gone for four days now, who knew what to expect?
The techs had taken extensive notes, including stills and video, which she’d downloaded to her laptop before she fled. But Mary needed more. She needed to get her hands on things. She needed to taste the place. She needed to draw it into her lungs. The air. The feel. The memory. The moment. There was something she needed to do. She could sense it. But the only way to get from here to there was to walk the path that unfolded before her. And she had to walk the path in her body. Years of astral trekking had taught her, paradoxically, to trust the flesh, the animal, the physical. Trekking had almost driven her mad.
Ten minutes of Google Universe on the bakery’s Wi-Fi had shown her the layout of Harmony Farm and Cole’s home site. It showed her the nearby gravel road that wound up through the hollow from the main road, taking her less than a half-mile from Cole’s house, where it sat near the farm’s northern edge. It had even shown her the little stream she had just crossed, where she’d soaked her tennis shoes when she slipped. Mary smiled. Google Universe was more accurate than Bob.
Cole’s house was just up the hill now, less than a hundred yards away. She could see it waiting warily amongst the fall-colored trees, flecks of afternoon sun squinting off its tin roof. Mary stood and watched, listening for any sounds of activity, feeling for any eyes that might see her. The house was empty and still, deserted, abandoned, alone. Mary could sense it. She started up the hill.
There were back steps up to the side deck and she took them, hoping to avoid the front of the house and the prying eyes of passersby. The deck’s sliding glass door was unlocked. She slid it open, entered the house, and closed the door. The silence encircled her like a lonely aunt, anxious to tell her what it knew. Mary stood and listened.
Linda had been here. This was the home Bob had seen on her trek the morning after the President escaped. This was where the tall man named Cole lived. This is where the two, then strangers, had met and spoken, where Linda had told her story, where Cole had agreed to help. Mary felt a pang in her stomach, not so much jealousy as simple sadness and regret: that things had gotten so out of hand; that she had not been as clear and strong as she could have been; that Linda was lost to her. The President and Cole had fled to Canada, the last she’d heard, with Rice no doubt nipping at their heels. Even if he managed to drag Linda back to D.C., nothing would ever be the same.
Mary stepped out into the middle of the room, turning slowly to take it all in, noticing the signs of children: the clothes, the schoolbooks, the toys. Cole and Linda must have taken the kids somewhere safe before fleeing. Probably not far. With any luck Rice would ignore the children. Mary prayed for that. There had already been too many mistakes.
Slowly she wandered the house, sitting on the leather sofa, leafing through the newspaper on the table, looking out the window at the horse in the pasture. In the trashcan she found bloody blue jeans and pieces of a telephone. In the sink she found unwashed breakfast dishes. The dog bowls were empty. The kids’ beds were unmade. On the boy’s room wall was a Star Wars poster. On the floor of the girls’ room lay a copy of The Little Prince.
A great weariness came over Mary as she looked down on the little bed by the window. The words wait here surfaced in her mind but she had no idea what that meant. She sat on the mattress’ edge, running her hand across the bedspread, smiling at the pastel flowers. She laid down, burying her face in the soft pink pillow, breathing in the scent of the young girl who had slept here, tasting the life that remained, wondering for a moment just what the hell she thought she was doing.
And then she fell asleep.
14.2
Obie stomped the snow from his boots and peeled the mask from his face.
“How is it out there?” asked Linda.
“Balmy!” he said with a laugh. He pulled the rubber band from his ponytail and shook out his long, sandy hair.
Linda smiled. “Yeah. Right. So how is it really?”
Obie unlaced his boots and kicked them off, then ducked into the kitchen for a large glass of water. Downing it in one huge draft as he walked, he moved into the living room, pushing a small, round ottoman toward the futon with his foot. “Well, it’s warmer than it looks,” he said. “The guy behind the bar said it’s been hovering right around five below Celsius all month, which is way warmer than the average. The wind makes it feel much worse.” Obie pushed a stack of old National Geographics from the ottoman’s green, leatherette surface and sat to face the President.
“What’s the average?” asked Linda.
“More like minus fifteen.”
Linda laid aside her covers and sat up
. “I napped a bit while you were out.”
“I’m glad.” Obie reached out and took Linda’s stockinged left foot in both hands. “May I?” he asked.
Linda nodded, unsure of Obie’s intentions but glad for his warm, sure touch. Her ankle still ached, even when she wasn’t standing on it. Maybe Obie had some medical training in his past? “How’s the town?” she asked, absently fingering the large bump on the crown of her head.
Obie inspected the President’s foot, slowly moving it through its range of motion. “There’s a post office, a little store with gas and diesel pumps, two bars, three hotels, and places to rent gear: sleds, snowmobiles, boats, ATVs and such. Throw in a bunch of houses and you’ve got Akkituyok. There’s an RCMP post too, but it doesn’t look like there’s anybody there.”
“Good to hear.”
Obie looked up. “Apparently ‘costs much’ is their motto as well as their name. I tried to get you some real coffee at the store but all they had was more instant and it was fourteen dollars a jar.”
“Yikes.”
“I think maybe that’s the price for strangers.”
“That feels fair.”
“I want to do some healing work with you now,” said Obie, smiling gently. “Is that alright with you?”
“You mean like massage or something? Or are we talking woo-woo here?”
“Definitely woo-woo.” Obie smiled. “I need your permission to touch and manipulate your body. I’ll be very gentle. You okay with that?”
“Sure.”
“And we can talk while I work. That might actually be better: to have your ego engaged elsewhere while your body and spirit restore themselves. That work for you?”
Linda nodded.
“So how’re you doing?” asked Obie, slowly inching the sock from Linda’s left foot. “Emotionally, I mean.”
Linda shrugged. “Oh, you know. Just sitting around trying not to cause the extinction of humanity.”
“Kind of a mind-fuck, isn’t it?”
“I’m just a lil’ ol’ farm girl from Michigan, Obie.”
“If that were the case you wouldn’t be here,” he said with a smirk.
“Yeah, well, that’s what you say. You know something I don’t know?”
Obie’s eyes flashed. “I know lots of things you don’t know, Mrs. President.”
Linda pulled the comforter up around her shoulders as a frown clouded her face. The black hole of grief and dread that had threatened to tear her apart earlier in the day had quieted and ebbed, but it had never fully disappeared. Every now and then it shuddered and whirled as Obie’s words poked at it, an angry bear roused from its slumber, or a nest of yellow jackets getting ready to swarm. Linda could feel it beginning to rise into her throat and forced it back down with a gulp. “So tell me,” she said, her voice tight and controlled.
Obie placed Linda’s bare foot on his lap. “Why don’t you ask me some questions?” He positioned his left hand under her ankle and his right hand an inch or so above it and closed his eyes.
“Jesus. Where do I start?” Linda took a deep breath, willing her body to relax into Obie’s steady hands. Only very slowly did it comply. “Okay,” she said at last. “So, here’s a question: if Rice and his gang got it all wrong, then what’s right? What are these Strangers up to?”
“Getting right to the heart of it, eh?” he said
“Yeah, I am. You’re a get-to-the-heart-of-it kinda guy, right? So get to the heart of it.”
Obie shifted his weight on the footstool, straightened his back. “Okay. Let’s see. The heart of it.” A soft smile blossomed on his face. With eyes still closed and both hands enveloping her twisted ankle, he began to speak. “As far as I can tell, the heart of it is this: the Universe is a school, designed by the Creator for the Evolution of Consciousness. Its purpose is to know itself.” Obie looked up into Linda’s eyes. “God seeks companionship, Mrs. President.”
Something about those words sent shivers up Linda’s spine. She’d heard them before, though she could not say where or when. Though she felt silly in doing so, she had to admit that the words resonated as somehow true. “Okay,” she said, her voice low. “So that’s what God’s up to. What about the aliens?”
Obie nodded. “Think of the Strangers as Co-Creators. They’re beings who’ve reached a high enough level of self-realization that they can choose to consciously align with the goals and intentions of the Cosmos.”
“You know you’re speaking in all-capitals, don’t you?” Linda smiled.
Obie laughed. “Sorry. Hard not to, you know? We’re talking major players here. And there’s so much I don’t really understand.”
Linda nodded. “So, these Strangers are like … the good guys? Is that what you’re saying? Friends of God and all that?”
Obie shook his head and closed his eyes, as if to concentrate on Linda’s ankle. “I don’t think that’s a helpful way to think of it. First of all, you have to stop thinking of the Strangers in monolithic terms. There are lots of different beings, from various realms and levels and dimensions, from widely disparate corners of space-time. Most come from waveforms and frequencies radically different from the physical frequencies which we inhabit, and manifest into our particular realm of matter only when necessary.”
“So … what? We’re talking a Men in Black movie here?”
“Not quite. It’s not monsters and spaceships. It’s more like beings from the spiritual realms, to use a general term that doesn’t really mean much anymore. These are beings that have transcended their physical roots and become creatures of the Cosmos. Many of them did so long before humans appeared on this planet. Most are here to observe, I think. A few are here for purposes that many would consider exploitive, selfish, or even evil. A couple are here to actively help.”
A deep and soothing warmth flowed through Obie’s fingers and into Linda’s bones. In the past few minutes the ache had gradually vanished. Linda blinked her eyes to rouse herself. It would be so easy to fall asleep. “Help how?” she asked.
“The focus is on the evolution of consciousness, I think. That’s what the Universe is up to. So they help with that. Prodding us to mature and evolve. Sometimes pulling. Sometimes pushing. They see us as a species trapped in adolescence. Blind to our own souls. They’re trying to parent us into adulthood.”
“And they’re doing this by putting men like Rice in charge?”
Obie opened his eyes to look at Linda. “They didn’t put Rice in charge. We did.”
“But they’re going along with it.”
“If we Imperialists truly wish to hang ourselves, they’ll give us all the rope we need, yes.”
“I thought you said they were here to help.”
Obie was quiet for a moment. “They’re here to help with the evolution of consciousness, Mrs. President. Think of this as an initiation into adulthood for the species as a whole, or at least for the culture of civilization. Initiations can be difficult and dangerous. Not everyone makes it through alive. There are dangers to be faced and overcome. Or not. There are decisions to make and challenges to meet. And there are no guarantees.” He manipulated Linda’s ankle through its range of motion once again, bringing his ear down low as if he were listening for pain. Satisfied by what he heard, he moved up Linda’s leg, sliding his left hand forward to cradle her calf while using his right like a magic wand, waving it over her left shin and thigh as though he could somehow locate her bruises through the moleskin.
“So we’re being put to the test,” said Linda. “And we might not make it.”
“I think both those things are true, yes. This is without a doubt the most crucial point in the history of our species. It can go either way.”
Linda closed her eyes and exhaled deeply. “A great time to be President, eh?”
Obie nodded and laid his right hand on the most painful bruise on her thigh.
14.3
“So who are the two groups that are here to help? Sounds like one of them must be those
little gray aliens like Spud, or the dead one in my underground cell. The ones that stole me from my home in the middle of the night when I was a girl. Who are the other ones?” Linda was flat on her back on the futon with her flannel shirt unbuttoned halfway up. Obie knelt on the floor beside her, his head hovering over her belly button, his ear down to listen. Linda’s stomach was an atlas of Rice’s insanity, a landscape of yellow and purple bruises crisscrossed by a network of main welts and secondary scratches and one scabbed, shallow incision running like a freeway through her navel. Though Linda’s mind had no conscious memory of the beating, her body recalled every blow, every punch, every slash. It was all Linda could do to not push Obie’s head away, so strong was her instinct for self-protection.
Obie spoke in matter-of-fact tones while he worked. “Well first, there’s a great deal of variety amongst the assorted beings known collectively as ‘the grays.’ And second, the physical appearance into which they’ve mostly settled these past few decades – the tiny bodies and large almond eyes and huge heads – has resulted from a feedback loop between the Strangers and our own human expectations, especially as things have played out in our popular culture and media. Apparently, most of them have decided it best to show up looking how we expect an alien to look. That tends to obscure their diversity. They range from highly subtle and sensitive living beings to those who are little more than robots.”
“Some seem to be here for what would appear to us as selfish reasons. Others can be fairly helpful. Many seem quite perplexed by our culture’s capacity for self-annihilation. The gray ones apparently have no group name for themselves. The People call them the Life, because the grays refer to each other as ‘alive ones.’ But the gray ones actually use that term for all high-frequency consciousnesses, not just themselves.” Obie stopped, raised his head, brought his right hand in to hover where his ear had been. He glanced at Linda, winked, and then returned his concentration to her stomach. “The other ones you mention are called the Elders or the Angels. That’s what the People call them, anyways. Personally, I’ve yet to meet any. These guys choose to look almost human when they dip into the physical, from all reports, though they’re usually very tall and quite beautiful. The gray ones are here in great numbers. The Angels are only a few. They appear to be at odds with each other, but I tend to think they’re both working for the same thing.”
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