King of the Dark Mountain

by Galili Black

  “I really don’t think we need to see …” Kate began.

  “Yes, you really do. I insist that everyone who has come out here to discover the truth should be rewarded by getting to see for themselves this amazing summation of human striving.”

  “No harm in looking, Kate,” someone said.

  “Exactly right, now form a line and follow this gentleman here, he’ll show you the way. We must insist that no one take pictures and also that you move quickly along, so that everyone gets a chance to see the miracle,” he said, indicating the armed guard behind him. People began to form a line. Kate stepped away to let others go ahead. She stood pondering a moment. When there were several dozen people lined up, the first one was allowed inside the tent.

  Kate fell into line after a tall fellow wearing a Hornets baseball cap. She thought it might be the friend of the two writers she had chatted with in the café. If it was, she intended to keep an eye on him. She glanced behind her and thought she caught sight of Richard Ewing in sun glasses behind a couple of teenage girls. They were chattering excitedly. “I’ll bet it’s like those creatures in Close Encounters, you know that old movie,” one of them said.

  “No, he said it’s not a child that we’re going to see, but something else,”

  “Well whatever it is, it must be something amazing because I saw that light shooting down out of the sky and it was really intense,” the other girl said.

  “I know my mom can’t stop talking about it, ever since it happened.”

  “My grandpa says it’s a sign of the end of the world. He wouldn’t come out here, because he said the people out here must have come from the devil.”

  “That doesn’t make any sense.”

  “Well grandpa always thinks everything means the end of the world.”

  “Cause for him it will be soon. Oh I guess that was mean. Sorry,”

  “That’s okay, he is pretty old, but anyhow I hope it’s something cool we’re going to see and not just some lame ass thing.”

  “Yeh me too.”

  Kate stopped listening to the girls’ conversation because she was almost to the front of the line at this point. She noticed the guards were looking at everyone carefully. She had seen them look in the purse of a woman, but mostly they were letting people go inside without stopping them. She walked past the man into the tent and saw that there were several long metal tables set up. On top of them were clear glass containers the size of a large screen television. They were oval shaped and multi-layered, filled with fluid. They reminded her of giant glass onions.

  She walked up to one of them to get a better look. At the center of the contraption she saw something that looked organic, but it wasn’t very distinct. She walked around and saw that the other contraptions were identical. They were all filled with fluid and seemed to have something organic looking at the center. She counted exactly a dozen of the things, arranged symmetrically around the tent. She looked around for the fellow in the baseball cap, but didn’t see him. She followed some people out the back of the tent.

  “Don’t see what the big deal was about those big oniony things,” a lady was saying to her companion.

  “Looked pretty high tech to me. Reckon they’ve figured out a way to grow children outside the womb,” the man replied.

  “Well that might be a good thing; you remember what a hard time I had bringing ours into this world.”

  Mrs. Malone went back around to the tent where the man had stood earlier. There were a few more armed guards gathered there, but she did not see the well-dressed man. Some people were getting into their cars and heading out. “Mrs. Malone,” someone said. She turned around and saw that it was Professor Griffin.

  “Did you get a chance to see the damnable things?”

  “Yes, did you?” He nodded.

  “So where are your friends?”

  “Back at the truck,”

  “I’m going home. You can come by later if you want. I would appreciate knowing more about this group, if you don’t mind.”

  “I think that could be arranged. Give me your address and we’ll come by as soon as we can.” Ted said, fishing a pen and note pad out of his pocket and handing it to her. She scribbled some directions to her house and handed it to him.

  “I need time to reflect on all of this, Dr. Griffin. So give me a few hours at least,” she said

  He nodded. “My friends and I need time to discuss matters among ourselves, but we’ll be at your house in a few hours then. Good day for now.” He turned away and disappeared into a group of people milling about. She got into her car and drove to the other side of the mountain. Her house was in plain sight of Harrow. The past several months had been a nightmare of waking up to her house shaking and dust settling over everything.

  She had given up on the idea of planting a garden this spring, or probably any spring in the future. She had finally admitted that she would just have to leave the area that had been her family’s home for hundreds of years. It was heartbreaking to think of giving up, but after doing what she could to stop the Sherman Coal Company, their enormous bulldozers had proved too much. Once they began, it was over quickly, and the damage was even worse than what she had tried to prepare herself for. The serene, tree covered landmark was razed nearly to the ground in a matter of weeks. It was a phenomenal whirlwind of monstrous machines tearing into the landscape. She had witnessed some of it in a state of shock and rage so intense that it left her fearing for her sanity.

  She thought of the man bragging about what a wonder those tents contained--the epitome of human striving. Dr. Griffin had said those people were the same ones who tore down the mountain. That seemed logical to her now that she thought about it. The people who employed giant machinery to level ancient mountains had the same kind of crazed hubris as the man spouting off about whatever monsters they were brewing in those glass wombs. She had no doubt that the little bits of organic matter would turn into the epitome of horror. She could see them emerging out of those shells, each layer carefully removed at the appropriate time until the end when they were finally fully developed.

  They might look similar to ordinary children, but they would be full of the kind of morbid pride that drove the worst of humanity to want to lay waste the world. It would be a matter not only of how they had been formed, but of course, how their fathers would raise them. They were being created for a single purpose--to destroy humankind. The truth of this insight was so clear and precise in her mind that it left her breathless. She almost had to pull off beside the road and retch, but she managed to make it to her house.

  She took a quick shower. Sometimes she had to take two or three a day to get rid of the grit that constantly stirred in the wind since they had mined the mountain. The water that came out of the shower was a brownish color, but with her herbal scented body wash it still got the job done. She felt better when she got out, and her mind was made up. When Dr. Griffin and his friends arrived she intended to tell them she would help them in any way possible to destroy the glass onions and rid the world of what they contained. She had lost the battle for the mountain, but she would not lose this battle.

  *

  At the break of dawn the next morning, she stood with her new friends, Ted, Richard and Hezekiah on the crest above the encampment which held the glass onions. Ted and Richard were carrying double barrel shotguns; Hez had his Glock in his hands. She had dug out her dad’s old hunting rifle. It was 40 gauge and was reputed to have brought down a ten point buck, which her grandfather had to finish off with his bare hands. It was a legendary story in her family how the old man had broken the creature’s neck once the rifle had wounded it. She was a fair shot herself, no Annie Oakley, but decent enough.

  “We have to move fast, if we’re lucky we can subdue the guards and not have to shoot them. Our targets are the abominations encased in glass, lest we forget,” Ted said. They started down the hill side just as the sun broke over the far horizon, a piercing brilliant light.

  It d
oesn’t feel like dawn, but like the middle of the day, Hez thought. Their new friend Kate was leading them. She reminded him a lot of Gran, the same stillness at her center, as fathomless as the mountains themselves. Her shimmering white braid was directly in his field of vision, it reached almost to her waist. It wasn’t the puny little braid of an old woman, but thick. He had seen photographs of Sitting Bull when he was in his sixties, and it reminded him of his hair, even though the latter had never gone grey. Sitting Bull had always been his hero, as a child he had read a book that described how the great chief had been able to talk to birds. In his own youth, he had once had a pet hawk, and there had been a day when he swore he could see what Samson could see. He had felt his own spirit enter that of his pet and the view of his family’s farm was so incredible, the thought of it now almost made him cry.

  The four of them moved as one when the guard turned his gun toward them. It all began to move in slow motion in Hez’s mind’s eye. Ted was propelled forward so quickly, he seemed to move faster than humanly possible. The guard dropped his weapon and Ted had him gagged and bound in what seemed like a long moment, but must have been seconds. Another guard emerged but before he could do anything, Richard had disarmed him. Hez found himself tying and gagging the man, who didn’t put up much of a resistance. That seemed odd, but he didn’t have time to consider it. They were moving as one and entered the tent.

  Incredibly Edsell was there. No longer wearing his Italian suit, he stood in what might have been called a smoking jacket back in the day and pajamas. It reminded Hez of some silly soft pornographic nonsense about a lifestyle, which harkened back to the 1970’s. There wasn’t anything soft core about what the man was bellowing however. “What in the hell are you doing?” he was screaming at the top of his lungs.

  Kate aimed her shot gun right at his silk encased torso and replied, “Why Mister we’re here to destroy those abominations over there.”

  “Why would some inbred hillbilly like yourself dare to attempt such a thing? We are so far above everything a peon like yourself could ever understand …” he roared. All the color was drained from his face and his eyes gleamed with rage.

  Kate smiled at him gently, “Well, since I like most people around here bear the genetic makeup of many countries, as well as the interesting mix of Native Americans and African slaves your truly inbred ancestors brought over, I will let that go … for now. What I dare to do is save our species from the warped vision of the likes of you.”

  “You have no right, you have no right,” he continued to yell and there were actually tears in his eyes.

  Hez stepped forward, “Kate is giving you the courtesy of answering your stupid questions. I’m not nice like her. Here’s what it’s all about.” He turned and opened fire on the glass onions. He fired with more than lightning speed. In a few moments; all of Edsell’s hopes were dissolved into shards. Ted and Richard helped finish off all the last of them.

  “You have doomed humanity to annihilation,” the pajama clad man proclaimed loudly after the noise was over and he was able to speak again. He sank to his knees.

  Suddenly, the tent was filled with armor clad, assault weapon bearing men. “Please drop your weapons, gentlemen and lady,” someone said loudly but evenly.

  They did so, without worrying too much about it. They managed a look between the four of them that said everything.

  The man nodded at the weeping man in the center of the tent. “You know that’s the most powerful man in the world.”

  Kate smiled and said, “You don’t say.”

  The man said, “We’re going to need you to answer some questions.”

  Hez approached him, “We aren’t going to help you concoct some cover for him or his ilk. We know what people like you always do. You harp about needing time to collect the facts or do research and then, before we know it we‘re back in the same old mess. It’s not going down like that this time. This time, we’re going to get things right.”

  “And you think you know what that is?” the man asked.

  “Well yeah, of course, it’s easy as pie, always has been, but people like you always manage to mess it up.” Hez replied.

  The man gave him a grim smile. “People like me have kept things going for a very long time. You think we’re some stupid cowboys with no vision of the larger picture, but you’re wrong. We know what needs to get done, and we get it done, that’s all there is.”

  “These looney tunes are the latest versions of all the looney tunes down through the ages who have tried for God knows how long to replace His creation with some tricked out version of their own device. Though in this case, it was a whole new level,” Kate said.

  “You don’t have to convince me, I’m completely with you on this,” the man said. “Don’t you think we could’ve have stepped in here and prevented what went down?”

  “Then why didn’t you do it yourself and spare us the trouble?” Hez replied.

  “We were working on a plan, but then it seemed better to let you people take care of it. We assumed you had been given the go ahead by some higher ups.”

  Hez stared at him dumb founded. Ted pulled on his sleeve. “Come on, this thing is more complicated than those things we just blew to smithereens.”

  “We’re leaving now. We’re going out that door, for us, this is over,” Kate said She turned and headed for the door. Her friends followed her. When they were outside the tent, she said to them, “I’m proud that we met.” She gave them each a look in turn and headed off for her car.

  The three men looked at each other. “Let’s go, maybe we can figure this thing out by the time we get back to New Hampshire,” Hez said.

  “I doubt we’ll ever understand it completely. My dear friends,” Ted said and hugged Richard and Hez in a long individual embrace. “I am looking forward to going back and taking care of my wife for a change. She is both the most common clay and the most transcendent beauty of all my life. I have not begun to fathom all that she holds for me. I know you Richard would say the same about Samantha. And Hez keep searching, she’s out there.”

  “A woman is one thing, but the universe is another,” Hez said.

  “Are you sure about that?” Ted asked.

  “Not at all,” laughed Hez.

  Chapter Twenty

  Spring had come early to Harrow Mountain. It had not come in the usual way of little leaves on acres of trees. All the dogwoods were long bulldozed off and lying as mulch along a waste stream on the southern side. The wild hazelnut trees were likewise compost for the sluggish trail of sludge that coursed where once a stream gurgled and played in the perennial spring rains. Most of the good hard wood trees, the oaks, walnut and hickory had been logged out prior to the removal of the mountain top and now adorned the floors of the newly rich Chinese. In the midst of all this profusion of squalid waste, in sight of the bleached out bones of the continental spine, jutting out in ragged edges, a different herald of renewed life had emerged.

  It started in the very spot where Edsell and his cohorts had set their camouflage tents. No sign of those remained. After the destruction of the glass onions, Edsell had ordered a rapid retreat, but first a cleanup operation removed every sign of what had once so proudly stood under those tents. On the mountain, Project Cripton was as completely removed as all the other signs of life had been, except for a twinkling something in the center.

  It was a little glow of light at first, then it became two. As the day and night wore on the sparks expanded in an ever widening spiral until they completely enclosed the ruin of the mountain. People began to come to see this amazing event and wonder at the little sparks of light, laid out in such a lovely pattern. A young girl named Noelle bravely approached one of the lights and held out her hand to touch it.

  Her mother rushed to stop her, but before she got to her child the light had come to rest on top of her head. It fluttered there like a butterfly. When it rested upon her brown curls, the child was illuminated from head to toe. She stood out in
fine detail, while people gathered round. Her expression was so ecstatic, that others began to approach the lights.

  Slowly each person received a light of his or her own, the point migrating to the very center of the tops of their heads, if they were children. Adults found the center of their foreheads pierced by the light. It hovered a moment and then settled in to create the illuminated effect. When all the people gathered there were illuminated, they began to hold hands and move up the mountain side. As they walked, they watched in wonderment as light shot up from their heads and foreheads and merged together so that a river of scintillating light moved over them and to a spot above the center of the former mountain.

  When Noelle reached the spot where the center once had stood she stopped. “We have to make it new,” she said. As the others gathered in a tighter ring around Noelle, the rock beneath her feet began to move. There was a groaning from the ground, and it began to shake. They all remained calm in the midst of all of this as Noelle rose in the center of them all. No one spoke or made any individual sign as they also began to move and rise, each spiral band of them a little later than the spiral band in front.

  When the shaking and groaning of the earth was over, four levels of granite were raised. Noelle stood at the center on the narrowest and tallest band of granite. When there was no more sound from below, she directed her palms to the ground and the rock began to glow. The others followed suit on their respective levels, so that the dull granite looked nearly translucent. A cascade of light fell away from Noelle to the rock near her feet and it carved a stair way that continued all the way down to the ground. Others helped her in this task, although it was done so quickly there was very little for anyone to do but watch the stairway appear and get out of the way.

  Without looking down, Noelle turned south and the people turned and looked with her in that direction. “We have to remove the pollution, let’s send it into the darkest pit we can think of,” she said to them with her mind’s voice. All the people heard her perfectly as though she had spoken out loud, for the little glimmering lights had given them this ability. They turned their minds to the task of destroying the muck pit on the south face of the mountain.