by Byron Craft
Below, their gowns billowing about them, the cloaked beings glided with a fluid motion up a long inclined surface through a pentagonal opening in the temple. The robes hung to the ground and dragged on the cobblestones making it impossible to detect the existence of any legs. I couldn’t help noticing the moist trail left in their passing. Each individual apparently secreted a thin layer of liquid, the results of an alien method of locomotion.
Mentally retracing my steps, I recalled that upon entering the city, not once did I see anything that resembled a staircase or a set of steps. Come to think of it, the curbs that joined the sidewalks and streets had all been gradually sloped and the sills of doorways that I had seen had been installed flush with ground level instead of being raised as is usual in conventional construction. I instinctively joined the procession and walked across the courtyard and entered the building.
***
I passed through a long empty hall and came out into a sizable chamber with lofty archways leading in from the halls and rooms. Through these the robed figures came and went. The room was faintly illuminated by lamps recessed in panels bordering the high ceiling. The ceiling itself bore no resemblance to the exterior outline of the building’s flattened roof. Instead, it rose from the walls in four triangular stone planes which slanted sharply to meet at a common apex above.
I was standing in what appeared to be the interior of a hollowed out pyramid. The ceiling of which was a perfect flawless white, the floor an equally perfect black. On the far side was an alter, large in itself but dwarfed by the mammoth proportions of the room. The large flagstones that comprised the floor were interrupted at one point in the very center of the chamber by a massive piece of granite. It was hinged to the masonry, a good thirty feet across, and sealed down with thick metal bands. It was a trap door. I sensed dim suggestions of a special peril beneath.
As if on signal the figures began to discard their robes. As the garments dropped to the stone, I saw them for the first time. I can still trace their monstrous outlines with uncomfortable ease. They were bizarre looking, iridescent upside-down cones, about nine or ten feet high and equally wide at the base and their flesh was made up of a leathery green, almost elastic material.
The base of each cone was fringed with a flexible substance that propelled them in a slithering lubricated motion across the floor through a series of expansions and contractions. Their heads were mounted on narrow stalks and they peered through the gloom of the chamber at me with three eyes that glowed red. Surmounting the creatures’ heads were four slender stems bearing flowered appendages, while on either side dangled eight antenna or tentacles.
This great race of beings had four cylindrical arm members each a foot thick; sometimes contracted to almost nothing while at other times, extending to any distance up to about ten feet. Terminating two of them was a series of trumpet-shaped suction appendages used, I guessed, for grasping tools and objects. The other two ended with lobster-like claws or nippers and it was by means of clicking them that they communicated.
I was terrified. When they first disrobed I backed quickly away without paying attention as to what was behind me. Almost at once the floor came up to meet me from behind. My head thumped a hard surface. A quick glance around told me of my predicament. Some of the tiles, in front of the alter, parted with noiseless ease and from the chamber floor rose a stainless steel table. My body was forced against it by an invisible power. I felt the cold metal against my bare skin. I couldn’t move a muscle.
The shiny metal slab was covered with an assortment of shackles and restraining straps of all sizes and configurations. The table must have been constructed to hold and examine a variety of living beings.
The same unseen power that held me against the slab rearranged each strap and manacle adjusting them to my form. Once secured, the pressing force ceased.
What I mistook for an altar erupted in lights of every color. Objects which still puzzle me now quickly projected from the flat surface. Elusively colored and textured objects like nothing I have ever seen. They were lightly colored crystalline things. There were curves and shapes that answered to no conceivable purpose and followed no conceivable geometry.
One of the creatures went behind the altar which by then looked more like an abstract art form...an alien control console. The console came to life with odd musical notes and softened light hues when the creature touched it. It reached out and grasped a crystal with one of its head tentacles and a narrow beam of light shot upward at a slight angle meeting the common apex in the ceiling. It hung just below the geometric shape rolling and churning in its own light source until a white ball of energy formed and grew in size. As if too massive to sustain itself anymore the glowing orb slowly floated down and descended to my eye level. It held my gaze steadily, hypnotically.
I felt the table tilt in order to afford me a direct view. My captives towered above me. All around me the creatures were clicking their claws in an excited frenzy while gliding around the table. In this position it was very comfortable, almost natural to peer into the glowing orb.
My head was aching. I had a singular feeling that something was trying to get possession of my thoughts. At first, brief glimmering visions took shape. Chaotic visions which in the beginning disturbed me greatly. They were fragmentary dream glimpses which appeared, I sensed, in a chronological pattern.
My conception of time...my ability to distinguish any ordered continuity was disordered; so that I formed notions about living in the present while casting my mind over eternity, past and future ages.
The pain in my head subsided followed by a relaxed numbing sensation. The part I began to play in these dream images was that of a disembodied consciousness with a range of vision wider than normal, floating freely about, but in one reality, confined to a metal slab and yet in another at home in bed.
I had witnessed several horrors. Any of which should have shocked me back into consciousness. I tried to call out to Janet who I knew lay beside me in the real world but my lips were numb and I could only manage a low murmur.
The cone-shaped being behind the controls pulled at a cluster of glass tubes. I gathered that these creatures were incapable of physically reproducing human speech, because the alien mechanism had to be employed on which frighteningly familiar sounds resembling the English language were played as on an instrument.
The machine droned in musically piping tones with soothing clarity. The mechanical voice began to have a calming effect speaking directly to me, telling me not to be afraid but to watch and listen. It immediately formed a narrative the contents of which unfolded as an account of the unusual race that I had made me their prisoner. A succession of wild visions began to unfold all in such visual quality that I soon lost all sense of the massive chamber.
I was taken back through immeasurable distances of time and space. An incredible wave of inferiority swept over me and I saw how minutely tiny each individual is in comparison with the total reality. I was taken back into the beginning, through many dimensions to the very creation of the universe.
Before our universe was created, this alien race dwelt on a black, almost dead orb. Not the physical semblances I was in the company of, rather their own mental heritage...for the mind of the Great Race I was told was older than its bodily form.
The beings of the dying elder world, wise with the ultimate secrets of the universe, had looked ahead for a new world and species wherein they might have a long life and sent their minds into that future race best adopted to house them...the cone shaped beings that peopled this alien metropolis.
This was probably the greatest race of all because it alone had conquered the secret of time. They had learned all that had been known or ever would be known in the universe through the power of its keener minds to project themselves into the past and future to study the lore of every age.
The images that continued within the globe revealed them to be industrialized, highly mechanized to the point that their machines demanded ve
ry little time from each citizen although from what I was permitted to view, I noticed a growing tendency towards the usage of mind control. One result I witnessed was when I was overpowered by the invisible force. The musical voice boasted that their abundant leisure time coupled with an individual life span of over ten thousand years was filled with intellectual and aesthetic activities of various sorts. Some of these pursuits included the creation of life forms from a plastic matter reared in laboratories to be used as a synthetic labor force.
They were totally dedicated to the art of learning and the improvement of the mind. After a great passage of time the Great Race, left unchecked, eventually developed into a civilization without instrumentalities; living and acting on the force of their minds alone.
The story of their universal migration and the eventual evolvement of a high civilization that spanned entire solar systems was spared me in great detail but was made clear by a rapid string of visual documentation highlighting the growth of their empire. The images slowed and there was the flutter of fear. I sensed it as well as saw it. It was in the globe, in the room.
The mechanical voice fell silent and a gloom spread across the chamber. The sensation of fear...an unnamable fear, seemed to grip my jailers in frozen terror. I was stunned by the aspect. How could that be? I couldn’t fathom it. This had to be the most evolved and advanced race of intelligent creatures since the beginning of creation. In all their greatness could they have even one fear?
I wasn’t mistaken. They stood transfixed around me, their many eyes nervously bulging. Two of their members skittered across the tiles and fled the room. I felt somehow that if they could have given to voice that they would have fled like screaming children. I was uneasy, but as absurd as it sounds, I remained the calmest. They just stood there staring at the orb which, by this time, had replaced the pictures of their magnificent history with dark shadowy images.
It was a minute or two before I realized that this was the basis of their alarm. They were shadows, shadows out of a time of a horrible and utterly alien presence. I was not able to gain a clear hint of what they looked like. They were only partly material, as we understand matter, the rest gave them their shadowy appearance. Despite the absence of wings or any visible means of flight they had the power of aerial motion. They came through space (from where I never learned) settling at both polar regions of a planet and preyed horribly upon the beings they found there.
The Great Race waged an awesome war against the dark forces. Enormous armies utilizing the knowledge and fantastic devices that their researchers had created were drawn together. They employed unknown principles of energy, using weapons that produced tremendous electrical effects.
The dark armies battled across the brooding landscapes for many years. I don’t know how long the war lasted but by the lapses in the images, the gradual changes in landscapes and the shifting of star patterns it must have lasted hundreds, perhaps thousands of years. At times they left the planet surface to fight amongst the stars where countless worlds were engaged to help in the combat. Whole planetary systems were destroyed. Many races and civilizations, even galactic empires were shattered or annihilated.
The dark ones appeared to be virtually indestructible. Just at the point in the fighting when I thought the conical people would give in and fall prey before the black science of the dark ones a new weapon was produced.
The mechanism was small, probably less than a meter in height and appeared to be made of brass and highly polished steel. I believe that this device called upon the very power of the universe itself, for in one sequence of images in the heat of a great battle, a gap appeared in the fabric of space swallowing the dark ones...imprisoning them.
A war that lasted probably centuries was over in almost the bat of an eye. One moment whole planets were devoured in a hellish struggle and the next second the heavens were at peace. The dark ones in full battle rage disappeared when a hole blacker than space itself appeared and they were sucked inside. Only a few immune to the power of the machine escaped. The largest was a formless mass, an amebic shape that somehow sprouted arms and legs. The rest, few in number, were mostly small hairy creatures that clung like parasites to the great slimy thing for protection. Horrible they all were if there had been cause by the Great Race to comprehend horror and loathsome, if they had any feelings of loathing.
Quickly and methodically they surrounded the predators and in a blinding flash of electrical fire drove them into the inner depth of a planet. The only exit from the cavern was sealed off by a mighty star quarried stone. Gigantic bolts were driven miles into the surface of the planet securing the huge piece of granite. As if this wasn’t enough, the stone door was then hinged to the planet’s surface and further secured by metal straps a couple feet thick and welded into place by the alien weapon.
Later, the trap door was surrounded by octagonal flagstones and a temple was constructed around it in order that a constant vigil remained over the spot. At different times mixtures of chemicals were brought to the site and brewed in large caldron tanks. The resulting brew was poured into the cavity of the planet through a small port in the great slab. Always the shadow of a nameless fear hung about the sealed trap door.
I realized quickly that I was in that very temple and the huge hatch in the middle of the chamber that I noticed when first arriving was the same as I saw reflected in the orb. I felt the gnawing fear that must have been harbored by my keepers. I struggled at my bonds but it was futile. I wanted to get away more than ever. I could see the trap door from my position and the very thought of the black nameless thing incarcerated below made my skin crawl.
Just then, a dreadful thought struck me. What if I was meant as a sacrifice to that thing? Before I could continue on that line of thinking I became distracted when the room grew brighter. The orb, which hung directly above me, glided down with a white hot radiance.
I couldn’t see the rest of the chamber or the aliens in it, only the fiery light. I was sure it was going to burn the flesh from my bones. It came closer. I closed my eyes. I felt the heat from the orb. Then the most frightening thought I had since the nightmare began raced through my mind. “MY GOD THIS IS REAL!”
***
I stared at the ceiling for a full minute tracing and retracing the familiar cracks and swells in the old plaster. On my left Janet still slept soundly. A storm had built up in the hills and the bedroom would light up from the infrequent intervals of lightning. I felt a tremendous relief coming out of that nightmare and back into the real world.
I turned on my right side and waited to catch a glimpse of the time on the alarm clock. I wish now that the lightning had stopped and the darkness would have remained undisturbed keeping me ignorant of what lurked in the room. I was fully on my right side, towards the edge of the bed with the pillow tucked alongside my head when the room awoke again with the white brilliance of a double lightning bolt.
I was face to face with a small deformed dwarf. There was the smell of rotten flesh. The gnome gripped the edge of the bed suspending itself just below the chin and peered over the sheets. Its foul breath slapped my face. It was unflinching, staring and the head was hairless, almost embryonic, while the backs of its tiny hands were bushy with course hair. Its hands looked like the paws of an animal. The skin was leathery and under the white radiance it was difficult to ascertain its color. I believe it was brown or possibly even green. One color was prominent under the prevailing light...red. Its red eyes looked directly into mine.
All this I remember seeing before the room fell dark again and I cried out at the top of my lungs. The lamp on Janet’s bed table came to life and I felt the warmth of her body next to mine and her voice telling me to wake up and all would be well.
My little man disappeared. After a short search that began under the bed and terminated down the hall I returned reassuring Janet as well as me that all was well and it had been nothing but a bad dream.
***
I couldn’t sleep the rest o
f the evening and laid there until just before sunrise, when I rose and went downstairs to make some coffee.
I sat in our little make shift breakfast nook, a small Formica and steel table surrounded on three sides by molded plastic chairs with an old mahogany dressing screen shoved up against the other end, and wondered if the majority of people ever pause to reflect upon the significance of their dreams. I spent the rest of the early hours waiting for the coming of dawn while my thoughts were devoted to my dream.
I am not an extravagant dreamer but there was one other time, in the past, when a dream had been as frightening and vivid. It was a similar nightmare as well. One steeped half in reality the other the product of a drug induced state. It was quite a while ago, several years, but it became fixed in my mind that morning.
It was a time when the consequences became an eternity. It was a time of olive drab clothing and gun metal gray...a time and lifestyle so overpowering that my life became one without individuality. We were alike as our clothing had dictated and the individual characteristics of complexion, eyes and hair color were subdued and blurred by the O.D. green and gray, blending us into a faceless unit of men systematically trained for killing.
Like many young Americans in my situation, I was there against my will. I found myself in a country unlike any place I had ever experienced with a climate almost unbearable to human life.
Vietnam is not recommended by your local tourist guide, but on the other hand, my excursion was not of my choosing, rather it was chosen for me by the U.S. Government. I thought the flying time I had under my belt as an amateur pilot would have placed me in an airbase somewhere but the Classification Board discovered that I had slight inner ear problems and shipped me off to the infantry. A grunt no less.