Coalescence (Camden Investigations Book 1)

by Gary Starta

  “I’m hoping not to ‘see’ me die either, my friend,” Mitchell said. He clapped Darian on the back. He mouthed to Iris. “I love you too.”

  Iris waited for Darian to slink into DJ’s embrace then she slid her arm around Mitchell’s back. “Shit, I was so wrong to keep this a secret. Look at what almost happened. I am so stupid.”

  Mitchell hugged her and kissed the top of her head. “No one on this team, and I do mean team—because we are one now—is ever going to think less of themselves again. We are all conscientious, well-trained investigators. That goes for any and all of us. No matter the outcome we should not feel shame. We’re fighting for the truth and we’re also fighting for humanity.” Kassidy and Rachel hugged Iris. Kassidy murmured in Iris’s ear, “I understand why you did what you did. You’re the ultimate mother hen.”

  Silence rang for a moment. Then Rusty began applauding. Soon, all joined in. The teams were now one.

  They fumbled for a conduit, some kind of female or male joining mechanism that would merge the object with rock.

  Rusty, appearing to enter a meditative state, ran his hands along symbols etched on the rock.

  Iris peered hard at the artifact. Comparing it with modern day technology, she was damned if she could see anything akin to prongs or plugs.

  But maybe they were going about it all wrong.

  “Just set it down, guys,” she suggested. When she was met with hard stares, she repeated, “I’m serious, just set the thing down.”

  Rusty shrugged. “I don’t think it can hurt.”

  Evan nodded. “Thanks for the reassurance. But is that just your educated guess?”

  Rusty flashed a smile. “Sometimes our instinct guides us as much as reason or fact. Men like Bill have taught me this.”

  Iris frowned. His situation with Bill sounded so similar to her and her Dad’s. They said one thing but practiced another. Where was Bill now when Rusty needed him the most?

  “Okay,” Evan said, “I’m just going to set our dial down right here in this sacred stone.”

  Rachel smirked. “Guess you guys won’t be dissing Ouija boards anytime soon.”

  “No, we won’t,” Evan responded. “Right now, I’m open to entertain any suggestion be it from god, alien, or spirit.”

  Everyone watched; disappointment segued into panic because nothing was happening. Iris pushed away the panic and reached deep into her mind, possibly her subconscious, for an answer.

  “Hot damn, I have an idea. I just don’t know how to execute it.”

  Mitchell demanded, “Share.”

  “Okay, DJ and Mitchell join with me.” She held out her hands. “Come on, let’s join hands. The mention of the Ouija board inspired me.” Mitchell rolled his eyes.

  “What are we praying for?” Mitchell asked.

  “We’re not praying, we’re summoning. If the OBOLs are even just a little sentient, I think we can ask them to help us.” The investigation of what she first thought to be some kind of poltergeist was in actuality caused by the artifact in tandem with OBOLs. “The OBOLs must be in the vicinity. They seem to cause all the interactions we’ve witnessed with the dial so far—at the Morses’ and at the cornfield. And just moments earlier when the Earth shook. I feel they are here. They just need some guidance.”

  “But if we could guide them, they could set up the defense system on their own.”

  “Yes, they might, Mitchell. But maybe that’s just too complex. What I’m suggesting is that we simply ask them to allow the dial find its power source. It can’t be that hard. It has been plugged into it before; maybe just not in this exact location.”

  Mitchell nodded. “Sounds like a plan. Sounds like our only plan.”

  Iris resisted the urge to slap him. “Let’s get going.” She motioned for the formation of a circle.

  After a few minutes, the dial began vibrating. The team, with the exception of the circled three—Iris, DJ, and Mitchell—began to back away, afraid some earthquake-like disturbance might be imminent. Kassidy shouted, “Hey guys, maybe you should think about breaking this link . . .”

  Iris threw back her head. “It’s working. Don’t do anything!”

  As if upon command, tiny robotic tentacles began to emerge from the dial’s underbelly. They clawed and ticked along its rocky resting place. Finally, the object settled next to one of the etchings. One of its claws pawed the stone until the symbol of the etching glowed. It began to turn into a 3D image. As it did, the triangular, materialized image rotated and showed two forked holes. The object stuck two of its tentacles into the sockets. Then, all hell broke loose on Earth.

  “IT’S GROWING!” Iris shouted to Mitchell. Her hair was whipped back in a breeze. The desert canyon was aglow. Colors blazed around and above them. Unlike before, the hues were more rich and vibrant than their pastel predecessors. It was as if the previous outlines were mere blueprints for what was to come. And it appeared to Iris, what was to come, was an ancient, lost city.

  Holographic designs blipped on and off. In the blaze of intense light, the day sky actually appeared dark. A strange yin and yang counterbalance. In the flashes, Iris was sure she could make out docks, huge pylons reaching toward the sky, capable of docking not one, but perhaps a fleet of aircraft.

  Below her, the rocky terrain transformed to moss. Lime-green color splashed at her from below. But it wasn’t only imagery, it was concrete. The moss was real. It was vegetation. It explained how ancient pueblo people subsisted here. “The kitchen garden,” Iris murmured. “Rusty, you were right.”

  Lightning flashed. Ghost images flittered on and off. The dockings weren’t quite as solidified as the moss beneath her feet. Perhaps the system was damaged or old, or just not quite up to specifications to enable this perceived city to return to life. But what Iris perceived left her with no doubt that ancients lived here. She only had to ask herself how and the answer came. Of course, it was ancient alien intervention all along. They traveled here, giving the humans sustenance. Why hadn’t her father told her about this? How could he have worked in such a field and never been exposed to what she was seeing now? At this second, she hated him just as every bit as she loved him. Then, she heard his voice in her head. With everything happening, she couldn’t be sure if it were illusion. She listened carefully again but the voice did not return.

  Gurgling noises competed with the fireworks. Iris dismissed them at first, too enraptured with the horizon that gave intermittent birth to constructs she had only observed in fiction movies.

  Purple, midnight blue, and forest green were some of the predominant colors trading place with the azure norm of the daytime Arizona sky. How could this be? How could two events, both day and night exist? What’s more, Iris asked herself, how could this region’s past be coexisting with its present? The gurgling noises continued, and they were accompanied by the snap of breaking branches. Then, one horrific scream enveloped Iris. She had no choice but to break her gaze.

  When she turned, the stupendous had become appalling.

  HE RAN, his legs were working properly now. But it was obvious what was transpiring in the canyon. And he was late!

  He shook his fist at the ever-changing sky. How could you have let this happen? Why didn’t you apprise me? If I could have alerted the Partner’s ship, I could have advised them to fire their weapon. Before this . . . happened!

  Minutes earlier, it all sounded so simple to Jack. He could simply disengage whatever those bastard kids had installed. But this wasn’t like pushing a few buttons on your laptop. How could he ever get this to disengage? It was awe inspiring and awful at the same time. The beauty of the sky reached down into Jack’s dark being and evoked memories of happier times. They were long ago. But they were happy, nonetheless. He pictured his family. Sometime in the past, long before he went to work for the Organization, Jack had been happy—without an incentive or purpose. A tear welled up in his eye. He ran cursing at the skies, shaking his fist at the Organization and crying over his severed ti
e with his family all in the same instant.

  SHE TOOK a quick head count. All accounted for, but DJ! The others had instinctively formed a defensive perimeter around what Iris’s mind could only interpret to be a king-sized lizard. Possibly, her overworked mind deduced, the being had been recreated, reconstituted, or regenerated by their intervention.

  Yet how would that explain DJ’s disappearance? Iris stared into Darian’s face for an answer. But the young man was sheet white. If he seemed frail and wobbly before, that status had just been bumped up to critical status.

  Did DJ run at the sight of the beast? Iris had an open distance of sight. No apparent sign of desertion. She still would have been in plain view. Now the worse outcome: ravaged or eaten? Did reptiles eat meat? It wasn’t something she could recall from Science 101.

  Okay, where is the blood? She may be off against a rock. Possibly bleeding from injury . . .

  She heard her Dad’s voice again. “Don’t worry, I’m coming.”

  “You’re coming?” she answered with a question. How could this be possible? She had never conversed telepathically with her father before. In fact, he tried to his damned best to dismiss the very fact she possessed this ability because of his confidentiality agreement with the Organization.

  The beast rose on his haunches. It surveyed them all, but Iris especially. She surveyed back.

  The creature possessed perfect diamond-shaped eye sockets, with some strange tuft of god knows what on its head. It would have been cute if it had been tiny and posed inside the glass tank of a pet shop. But it loomed large with mesh-like skin, dots of black checkering over a lime field of green. The mouth was most lizard-like, especially when a salmon-pink tongue flickered in and out. And its skinny arms almost gave you a false sense of relief, until you surveyed its Eagle-like appendages. Which were worse? The claws or the suction cupped under sides?

  But what was more maddening than where this creature came from and its potential for damage was the fact DJ was gone.

  JACK SEEMED to know right where to run. How could he have missed it? Even if he had not surveyed the site prior, the galactic circus taking place in the outer left portion of the Pueblo Bonito was a sight to behold.

  Flickering lightning charges lit up and darkened the ancient stone stage as if strobe lights. And if that wasn’t enough, the wall that helped conceal Jack only hours ago, had been transformed into what appeared to be the largest version of Windows Jack had ever seen.

  As he pushed himself deeper into the pueblo, Jack realized he could stop taking cover behind jagged walls. The investigators were up to their eyeballs in trouble. If the stage hadn’t already been set with strobe lights and ever-growing vegetation, Jack would have rubbed his eyes. But what he saw in the not too far distance gave him hope to complete his mission.

  The staggering creature was leverage. It had to be one of the Reptilians; the enemy of the Greys. He really didn’t like or dislike the green being. But if he could somehow capture it alive, he could offer it up to the Greys. They would surely see his ingenuity. They would wonder why they put up with the Organization’s shortcomings for so long. With the reptile, the dial, and a decimated power station, Jack began to believe again—in himself. Gone were the misty memories of Mom and Dad. They could have never prepped him for such a glorified life, not with all tuition in the universe.

  He would take advantage of the hysteria, work his way up and behind the creature.

  DAN DABBED at the wetness at the back of his head. He was woozy but alive.

  His first thought: deactivate the chip. At this point, it was the only means to find his daughters, and he already was on the Organization’s shit list to worry about protocol. Jack had too much of a lead on him. Maybe, if he could just speak to them, he could give them courage and hope to hang on.

  Dan was too far away to realize the once serene Pueblo Bonito had become the cosmos’s circus.

  He attempted communication. He could only reach Iris it seemed. Her mind resonated with confusion. Worse, it rang with disbelief. He jettisoned his hat. Then he ran for his daughters’ lives as best as he could with a swooning head.

  JACK WAS in the favor of the heavens again, it seemed. He smiled and nearly dance-skipped his way behind the giant, thrashing reptile. No one had opposed him so far. Maybe this stupid being would go down without a fight. The degree of shock the young investigators could stand would determine how much of an effort it would take to subdue them and retrieve the object. But first things first . . .

  Jack lobbed a stone to gain its attention. It turned on him, instinctively and foolishly. Now, it no longer mattered if the investigators saw him or not. They were too dazed and disoriented to turn any attack on him. Their instinct, as humans, would be to distance themselves away from the non-human.

  Now, all Jack had to do was trick the others into aiding him.

  “Come on, guys. Give me a hand. Let’s capture this thing.” He almost snickered with disbelief at his own lie. “I’ll give you a big reward.”

  He lobbed a second rock at the creature. It made some perverted infant sound. It didn’t sound at all scary to Jack.

  Jack was way too involved with his grand future to notice Iris had changed positions. Now behind Jack’s back, she lobbed a rock at him.

  “Leave us alone! We’ll handle this!” she screamed.

  He answered, “You need my help. Why don’t we work together and put this thing down? Come on! Don’t be a bitch!”

  Iris heard her father’s voice in her head again. It seemed so perverted, so unlikely, yet maybe she was being given a message. There was no time to respond to the voice in her head. The man in the black attire was waving his hands at the reptile. She doubted his sincerity. If he didn’t mean to harm it, he would capture it and certainly torture it for some sick purpose. Only the being he was threatening wasn’t what he thought it was . . .

  “No! You’re not going to do anything to my sister or to anyone else!”

  Jack turned to face her for an instant, pointing to his holstered weapon. “Yeah, and who’s going to stop me! And just what the fuck do you mean, by your sister?”

  Iris didn’t know how she was sure, but she was. The reptile was somehow her half sister DJ. And whoever even fantasized for one lonely moment that she would allow any harm to come to her team, to her family, was sorely mistaken.

  “I’ll give you one more warning! Get away from my sister!”

  Iris wasn’t certain of the outcome, however. He did have a gun. But there was no way in hell—or Chaco Canyon, for that matter—she was going to live with survivor’s guilt. She should have stood up for Ron a long time ago. She’d been given a second chance, it seemed, and she was going to take it, even if it spelled the end of her existence.

  CHOKED WITH anger, Jack couldn’t resist belittling the small girl with glasses one more time. “Why don’t you get a new pair of specs? Can’t you see that this fucker is not your sister?”

  As he taunted Iris, the Reptilian took its cue. Its clawed appendages wracked their way down the spine of Jack to his blood curdling screams of realization.

  As Jack moaned and hissed, he reached for his weapon.

  “All right, I’ll put an end to you first . . . then you won’t have to watch your sister . . .”

  He never completed his sentence. Jack staggered.

  MITCHELL FLEW across like a linebacker, tackling Jack and his bloodied backside. They fell off the ledge. The creature bored over them. Its tongue flickered in and out.

  Iris observed in horror. No matter how much drive or will she had in her, it might be impossible to stop the unthinkable.

  She knew the creature was DJ. But did the creature know it was DJ?

  “Mitch!” she screamed. “Get out of there!”

  Evan, who was nearest, grabbed his friend, who fortunately had rolled on top of Jack.

  As soon Mitch and Evan stumbled away, the creature leapt.

  It landed on Jack or so Iris thought. She couldn’t qu
ite see, the jut of ledge obstructing her view. Sucking sounds followed. Wet and disturbing. Iris listened to Jack’s final muffled screams.

  Then she nearly jumped out of her skin. Jack’s decapitated head popped back onto the ledge. It smiled at her, a sick and final grin. As if he understood he was the butt of the universe’s grandest joke.

  What transpired next paled in comparison to Jack’s mutilated ass.

  The reptile was no longer a concern. It laid behind the ledge, wrapped in a fetal position. As if it knew what was coming. It’s end.

  The sight of her sister froze Iris in her tracks and despite the fact an attacker had been vanquished, a bigger problem loomed. She could see the failure looming all over the canyon. A malfunction had taken the dial offline with its power source. Moss began to recede and wither. The magnificent lights and accompanying holographs dissipated. And Iris’s hope to save Mitchell and her family waned: Big Time.

  Chapter Nineteen

  DJ’S SCREAMS echoed across the pueblo still checkered in flickering light. No longer emitting a reptilian bleat, the yelling had swelled into angry human emotion frothing from DJ like a pot coming to boil. The acrid canyon seemed to swallow it though along with the remaining remnants that proved an ancient city had once thrived here. The final hints of indigo and purple had faded to a noncommittal white light that gave the brown canyon its alien illumination. Sort of like a lone porch light. Everything else had powered down. The pueblo was inanimate once more, and to Iris, it no longer had any capacity to care about the shocked and confused woman it had transformed to a beast moments earlier.

  Iris was less concerned with laser theatrics at the moment. She was the first to notice DJ’s return. She was back to being human, albeit a naked one. Now DJ had something else to scream about.