Coalescence (Camden Investigations Book 1)

by Gary Starta

  “I meant,” Iris thought to Mitchell’s subconscious mind, “I just couldn’t trust myself to lie back and watch a friend get hurt again. It would be like I was given an experience and had learned nothing from it.”

  “Okay, so you’re here. I don’t see how you or anyone can protect me . . . from . . . whatever this is.” Iris could perceive Mitchell extending his arms as if they were parenthesizing their new and strange environs.

  “I will admit. I don’t know, either.”

  “And I’ll admit I probably have no place being here, either. I’m certainly not qualified.”

  “No. But you’re willing. You’re open. You’ve opened your mind to allow this. I wish I could say the same. It seems you’re willing to believe in conversations with the dead—albeit alien—while I stubbornly cling to my beliefs.”

  “Are you sure they are your beliefs?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, you could have been influenced.”

  “And if I was?”

  “If you were, maybe you should reconsider the motivation of whoever influenced you.”

  “I know what you’re getting at. You think my father . . .”

  A seismic rumble, and then, an invisible wave interrupted the conversation—causing portions of Iris and Mitchell’s new reality to distort and blur. It was as if one was looking through the flames of a fire and the objects on the other side had appeared to bend and waver.

  “What’s happening?” Mitchell asked, his hand reached for her, but missed. Both fell to their knees. The occupants of the street who managed not to fall during the wave increased the speed of their mechanical soldier-like march. In their wake, caked dust rose off the road, thrusting a brown storm of debris into their faces. Mitchell coughed. Iris fought to remove a particle from her eye; it stung badly, tearing.

  “We’ve got to get up!” Mitchell screamed to be heard above the wail of the wind and the cries of the occupants.

  “No.” Iris shook her head at him. “This is okay. DJ has made contact with the presence. I can feel it. It’s causing this.” She spoke louder in response to Mitchell who had cupped a hand to his ear.

  It was as if a ripple had occurred. Iris and Mitchell were in some kind of liquid that now cascaded into bigger and larger ripples, like when a stone is thrown into a lake.

  Iris wondered if there was some kind of danger of both their subconscious minds becoming fused. She hadn’t thought about that. She hadn’t thought about a lot of consequences of her interference. Now she might have put Mitchell in even more danger.

  She leveraged herself upright by applying pressure onto her right leg with her hands laced together. Mitchell observed and did the same.

  The minuet of a steeple caught their eye. In the face of the clock, an image shimmered into focus. It was DJ.

  “It must be DJ giving us the signal a connection has been established,” Iris yelled her thought.

  “As if we needed one.” Mitchell gazed about the aftermath of the ripple, his hands again making parentheses. Debris was scattered everywhere. Carts that carried some sort of produce were tipped over and abandoned.

  Iris noticed the contents were putrefied. Had that happened in consequence of the ripple or before? There was no time to ponder. The presence spoke.

  Amid the rustic ruins, a huge screen erected itself across the road. It reminded Iris of a drive-in movie. But it was like Salvador Dali artwork, peculiarly out of place with its environs, or, like the Old West had suddenly collided with the information highway.

  It was where the presence first appeared as a tangible being. Only it wasn’t human, nor did it resemble any gray or green alien. Instead, it was comprised mostly of light except for its appendages. Dashes of black appeared where hands and feet should have been. The remainder of the body, which when viewed as an outline did appear human shaped; however, it was colored in all hues of the rainbow.

  Mitchell turned his head to Iris. “It looks like some kind of neon gingerbread man.”

  Iris was too baffled to respond. If this was a human playing some kind of trick with them, how was it pulling this off? Its appearance was disturbing in itself. Beautiful colors had taken on a sinister and ominous meaning. When she considered the imagery of the apocalyptic wasteland surrounding them, she wondered how anything or any spirit could manage this. Could this being somehow be tapping into the ley or fault lines Mitchell had spoken about? Was it how it had manipulated each and every event they had experienced? But how could a spirit accomplish all this? And what place or importance did the dial play in all this? It was safely confined in Mitchell’s storage locker. This being had told DJ the dial must be taken to a place where it could protect the population from an engineered plague.

  As if the apparition heard her thoughts, imagery appeared on the giant movie screen.

  Photos flashed across it. All were of barren wastelands similar to where they stood. The only vocal communication initiated was via subconscious thought, similar to how Iris and Mitchell were conversing. This meant the being was inside their heads.

  “This is my planet. You are merely visiting. Now do you understand why you must heed my warning?”

  Iris shuddered. Even her subconscious voice stammered. “Do-o n-not deceive us. We k-know wh-er-e we-e are.”

  “Then you deceive yourself. You are not so big as to believe you are the sole occupants. Even on your earth, we have walked among you, for years—without notice. It is time you awakened to your full consciousness. See my world through your own eyes.”

  Mitchell intervened. “Arguing is getting us nowhere. Tell us what we must do with the object. And explain how it protects us.”

  The screen flashed. It showed ruins. Again they appeared to be from some desolate planet.

  “Wait a minute.” Iris raised her hand. “I know this. It’s somewhere in Arizona. This is not some other planet.”

  “You are correct. It is an energy reserve to power the artifact. You must interface the artifact with the energy reserve. You will find it somewhere here.”

  “I must know your motivation. I don’t care how it can protect us,” Iris shouted, balling a fist and waving it at the screen.

  The screen displayed a spaceship. It was rocket-shaped with wings resembling a housefly. It had just come out of some warp jump, slowing down, but powering up another one of its systems by indication of a blue glowing light on its tail.

  It flashed an arc of light. Curve-like it resembled a ripple of pond water disturbed by a stone. It resonated and bounded toward a neighboring world. It didn’t appear to be Earth; it was too brown and red. The impact shook the planet. Then, as if a camera had panned down to the surface, scenes of destruction followed. But the devastation of the planet’s environs was not the most disturbing. Its populace had fallen where they had stood. It was similar to the current surroundings, but Iris noticed the technology of the planet wasn’t nearly as sparse. Factories rose high above the fallen people, trivializing their ant-like existence. It was as if this were some other time on Earth, or perhaps Iris thought, the result of an enormous time slip. Her conscious mind still refused to believe other worlds supported alien populations.

  The screen flashed again. The image of the supposed alien ghost reappeared in its glowing neon rainbow form.

  “If this is trickery,” it screamed at Iris, “how can I appear in this manner to you? You must acknowledge even the part of your brain responsible for creativity and imagination could not have conceived something like this.”

  Iris turned to Mitchell. He already knew her question before she could finish thinking it.

  “No,” he said to her. “I have never imagined anything quite like this. I am sure this being is not accessing my mind to do this.”

  “How can you be sure?” Iris asked him.

  “It’s time to take a leap of faith, Iris. You are surrounded by decimation. We can’t allow this to happen. Whatever is doing this has destroyed his world. He’s giving us the means to save o
urselves.”

  “Again, I ask, why is he so motivated to help us?”

  “That’s just it. He isn’t. His true motivation is revenge.” Mitchell turned his gaze from Iris to the screen. “Tell me, I’m correct, aren’t I?”

  Iris could feel an emotion emanating from the screen. It felt as if the Skittle-colored apparition was grinning back at them. Not with delight, however, but with deep remorse and intense hatred for whoever had perpetrated the genocide against his race.

  Whatever it was, Iris concluded, it needed them to take revenge for it. If so, its power was limited. Iris dared not to dwell on how she might take advantage of this conclusion. The presence was well within its power to hear her every thought, and even more disturbing, it was still grinning at her.

  Chapter Ten

  IRIS TOSSED onto her right side. Then she shifted to her left. Over her, she sensed some kind of probe. It was a powerful speck of light, and it had to be miles above her, peering at her through a window as she slept.

  She squinted and raised a hand to shield the light emanating downward. But the probe’s glowering white light was relentless. When she moved, it appeared to move. At least, she sensed it did. She grunted and tugged the covers from her feet so she could cover her head. But lack of fresh air and the curiosity of feeling spied on from the skies soon necessitated her reemergence. What the hell was this? Was she in a dream state? Perhaps, it was sensory overload from her psychic ménage a trios?

  She couldn’t be sure if these were just residual images from her and Mitchell’s meeting with the supposed ghost alien. Maybe the ghost had a way of transmitting more messages to her. She believed the bond had been severed hours earlier, DJ confirmed as much. But she had personally never acted as a medium before. The key word was act. Without DJ and assistance from Evan’s cage, Iris believed she could have never communed with the dead. But since she had, she couldn’t be sure if the presence now had instant access to her mind. If so, what about Mitchell? Would, or could, it access his mind freely now? Had their brain waves been altered forever?

  She squinted again but it was impossible to put a make on the image. Too much glow to discern if it was simply an earth-based craft such as a helicopter. It was too far away to hear any noise emanating. What was her next move? She shook away some of her grogginess by raising herself to a sitting position. Iris spied her phone on the nightstand and reached for it. She had Mitchell on speed dial. It was too easy to hit the button and probably wake the man she felt so confused about. He might be sleeping, despite the experience of his life—contact with an alien. Iris surmised the telepathic activity had exhausted him. He had to be asleep. And she’d made uneasy eye contact with him as they parted company for the night. She had intruded on his investigation, after all. It was not the right time for a call. Okay, she could always pop out into the hallway and check in on DJ.

  Her sister was asleep. For a moment, she envied how DJ treated psychic communication as it were some kind of banal house chore. Despite the night’s activity, not to mention the overhead light hovering over the Camden residence, how could everyone simply saunter off to sleep so easily? Iris shook her head and headed back toward her room.

  SHE CLOSED her bedroom door a little too hard, regretting how anger and some other heavy-duty emotions were tugging upon her feelings like a full moon. She glanced at her phone and then to the window over her bed. But it was dark except for the soft glow of the iPhone. When had the white strobe left? In the instant she had roamed the hall? Had it been there at all? She peered out her window but only could make out a faint twinkle of a star. A crescent moon was visible from the other side of the house. There wasn’t any airplane activity. Did her mind just play tricks on her, if so, was she somehow influenced in a subconscious way from everything she had witnessed mere hours ago? The visions of walking upon strange soil, the unnatural light-gray sky seeming to weigh heavy upon her as some sort of suffocating ether, and the communication with the presence via a drive-in movie screen; they were all imagery. But they were still not tangible in her judgment. She could have had her mind manipulated. She was communing with the presence via her subconscious, a different form of telepathy not used by mediums.

  She also considered Mitchell’s claims that her father had some agenda for instilling such aggressive non-belief in extraterrestrials. This, she had to admit, triggered guilt. Were her waking moments now subject to some kind of psychic invasion or influence? And was it from both the presence as well as Mitchell? Or, more logically, had her slumber into dream state only made her believe she had been awakened moments ago? Was the illumination she believed to be spying on her just a dream? She reasoned her mind must be very confused. All she had witnessed, including the psychic tether with the presence, could be illusion. She had no prior experience as a medium to judge otherwise. She felt too taxed to tap into the psychic connection with her sister. Defeated, she fell into bed and willed her mind to relax so she might get a few hours sleep. It was a workday. Afterwards, the teams would meet to learn about their psychic expedition. She heard Mitchell’s voice as she drifted to sleep. He was so emphatic what he had seen was real and urgent. She didn’t have a clue as to how she would counter his report to the teams. If everyone believed in what the presence claimed was real, maybe she could still pick apart his claims by attacking his motivation. A part of her wanted Mitchell to find his holy grail. Another part of her warned his quest might be veiled in illusion. Not only would it lead Mitchell into danger, but every being on the planet. Because, what if the presence not only wanted to take revenge upon his enemy aliens, but humanity as well?

  IRIS SIPPED Chamomile tea, but her hands kept shaking. So much for herbals.

  Kassidy placed a hand on her back. “Hey, try to take some deep breaths.” Any minute Mitchell’s UFO team would arrive. “You don’t want the guys witnessing your impersonation of me, do you? Besides, you’d need a serious perm to pull it off.”

  Iris forced a smile for Kassidy’s benefit.

  “It’s all right. You can put your guard down. It’s me.” Kassidy led Iris from the living area to the unoccupied kitchen. She motioned from Iris to take a seat. “I can’t give you enough kudos for what you did, jumping into the fray to help your boy—uh, I mean, Mitchell. Actually, I can’t even comprehend what you did. But the hand thing, that’s my affliction. I get the shakes from my overindulgences. Your hands are our guide. They need to remain steady as a rock, like you.”

  Iris pulled out a chair but remained standing. “That’s just it, Kassidy. Sometimes I feel so isolated. I can identify with the rock but not its solidity. I’m supposed to be the leader here. You shouldn’t have to hold my damn hand. Literally . . .” She crossed her arms. “I think I’ve made a mistake. I’ve let my involvement with Mitchell cloud things. Your observations are correct. And, if I were you, I wouldn’t blame you if you kicked my ass right now.”

  Kassidy winked. “Would that be a fun thing to do?”

  Rachel entered. “Are we all ready for the most paranormal fun one can have with her clothes on?”

  “Have you been eavesdropping, Rache?” Kassidy asked with a sly grin.

  “No. Way too busy thinking for that. We’ve made the most important paranormal discovery of our times, and the damned thing is—we can’t tell a soul about it.”

  Iris bit her lip. It felt as if the presence was influencing everyone. She recalled last night’s séance. It demanded the teams keep their discovery of the object a secret. She recalled watching a wreckage scene supposedly depicting the alien’s craft. The presence claimed its ship had been discovered by the enemy and was sabotaged. It was how it died. Fortunately, the presence maintained, it had been able to engage the dial with a satellite without knowledge of the enemy. But had it? How could the enemy alien know of its existence yet not figure out where the dial was? Why would they cause the wreckage of an alien craft on Earth? Weren’t all aliens wary of alerting humans? But the presence countered the enemy aliens gambled the world’s g
overnments would cover up the crash. Remove all evidence and deny a crash ever occurred—at least one involving extraterrestrial beings. She recalled Mitchell’s response to this. He noted it was just like the infamous Kecksburg crash site in the 1960s. Funny thing was: Mitchell wasn’t even born then. And the incident sure wasn’t infamous to her. She believed the presence manipulated Mitchell by confirming his conspiracy theories. Mitchell had been waiting all his life for someone to acknowledge that cover-ups were commonplace. She couldn’t fathom how anyone would convince him otherwise. It was as if the alien sifted through Mitchell’s subconscious to find the best ammunition to support its cause.

  When Mitchell entered, Iris felt as if she were greeting her most beloved boyfriend but also her greatest nemesis. She had no one to blame for this conundrum. Why couldn’t she have resisted? How could she have become involved with someone who was not only a colleague, but someone whose beliefs she opposed?

  She had denied herself involvement with Ron. He believed everything she had back then. He was an outstanding leader and mentor. She’d fantasized too many times to count where it might have led: a long romance, possibly even marriage and a family? That was all fantasy now because she witnessed the man’s demise at the hands of spirits—their strange orbs turning a capable man into an emotional invalid in a blink. She had living proof that those orbs, or whatever they were, affected him.

  But she couldn’t know if Mitchell’s OBOLs, the dial, or even that strange light that may or may not have shined on her bedroom last night had any real powers. A caduceus had been drawn in a cornfield by something that’s light affected the crops in an adverse way. But could all of these happenings, the very dial itself, still be terrestrial? The work her father devoted his life to made her believe this possible. These events could all be linked back to the world’s governments or military branches. Of course, they didn’t want the world to discover top-secret technology. That’s why Mitchell believed in the cover-ups. In a way, he was right, but only partially. Given the presence might still be of terrestrial origin as well, might it have gained access to some of the government’s technologies and manipulated Mitchell and her to do its bidding for god knows what?