“They don’t usually come in this close,” Mathis said, as excited as I was. He splashed as we watched, and lo and behold, the dolphin changed course and circled back toward us.
“What! Is he . . . ?”
“He could be used to humans. It happens.”
Of course, I’d seen dolphins perform in aquarium shows, but this was the real thing. I remained still, not wanting to alarm the creature, as Mathis gently splashed, coaxing the dolphin to come and say hello.
And it did come in close, so close I felt a little timid. Just what was one to do when face-to-flank with a sizable sea creature? Did they bite? Were they skittish?
The dolphin floated within reach, resting placidly in the water.
“Yes,” said Mathis. “Definitely habituated to humans. It’s too bad we don’t have a treat we can give it.”
“Amazing!” I whispered, awed and relishing the moment.
But then again . . .
While silvery gray as a dolphin should be, there was an odd greenish sheen on the hide. I leaned, studying, trying to verify.
The dolphin rolled lazily on its side like a dog.
Mathis chuckled. “Look at that! He’s gotten used to getting belly rubs.”
“Really?”
He gestured. “Go ahead.”
“Are you sure?”
“Move slowly. See what happens.”
I took a step closer, extended my hand . . .
I froze, as did time. I looked again to be sure.
The dolphin had no eyes, only empty sockets exuding a green pollutant into the water.
With heart-stopping abruptness, the bark of a dog made me jump and shattered the moment. The dolphin vanished in a thunderous splash that doused me. The dog kept barking, fiercely, protectively.
And pieces came together in that moment. The dog happened to be Abby, on a leash, expected, and brought to the aquatic preserve by Brenda and Tank. I turned to observe, and there she was, running along the bank, pulling Tank after her, barking furiously at the departing dolphin.
A sideways look at Mathis revealed a man taken aback and alarmed.
“What is this?” he asked.
“They got here late,” I replied, not telling him that was our whole intention. “Whatever we’re dealing with, it seems Abby has a sense about it. It might be a scent, it might be raw intuition, we don’t know, but I thought it could be helpful today—and it seems that’s the case.”
“But she scared the dolphin!”
I nodded. “Indeed she did.”
The dolphin now gone, Abby was willing to submit to Tank’s leading—but then she went into bark and attack mode at the sight of Mathis! Now both Brenda and Tank worked to contain her, but I could see they would never get her back into the car without risk.
“I’m so very sorry,” I told Mathis. “This is not a good situation. Perhaps if you could work your way back to your car and leave, we can get that dog contained.”
Mathis wasn’t about to argue. “I’ll do that.”
He clambered out of the water, pushed his way through the grass and mangrove, and a moment later, I heard his car start and drive away.
Abby watched him go, and then calmed down, loved and petted by Tank and Brenda. I climbed up the bank, slipped out of the waders, and joined them.
“Well done,” I said, still shaken.
“Sorry . . . I think,” said Tank, kneeling by Abby. The dog was panting and smiling, but still edgy.
“On the contrary, you have carried out a successful experiment, and also may have saved my life.” The fact unnerved me even as I shared it. “That dolphin had no eyes, and it was oozing green.”
I could see shock hit them, followed by new realizations.
“Just like Abby!” Brenda exclaimed.
“No wonder she was so upset,” said Tank. “She’s been there. She lost her eyes, lost her life.”
“Whatever gunk got into that dolphin got into her, too,” said Brenda, who immediately cursed as the next connection hit. “But . . . she barked at Mathis . . . and she barked at Andi!”
“Sensing the same thing in all three,” I said as I sat on the grass, weakened, trying to sort it out.
“And she’s sensing the same thing at Jacob and Sadie’s house,” said Tank. “Sitting there looking out at the ocean, right? Just like that time she ran into the surf chasing after something.”
“And came back dead with her eyes gone,” Brenda added, “just like the dolphin.”
“Which puts us right on the edge of accepting UFOs,” I said, my cynicism unhidden. “Didn’t a huge glowing sphere in the sky fit into the narrative? Let’s be cautious here.”
They both raised their eyebrows at me. Maybe Tank learned it from Brenda.
“But you are witnesses: I accept that Abby has a canine gift of some kind, and I’ve reached the point of trusting it.”
“Wow,” said Brenda. “Trust.”
I avoided that rabbit trail. “And given that, whatever Abby is telling us does not bode well, and the whole situation is getting bigger, wider in scope than we first thought. We’ve seen this eyeless death thing before.”
“All those dead fish and birds,” said Brenda.
“Those tough guys back in Italy,” said Tank.
“The birds that rained on us while we were in that taxi.”
“And on and on it goes,” I said, even as Brenda’s comment about trust persisted in my mind. Where would I be now if Brenda and Tank hadn’t joined in the plan and brought Abby when they did? Where would I be if I had to sort this whole thing out and save Andi alone? If there was a point, a plan, an overarching scheme behind what faced us now, could that same scheme have been behind all those past places and cockeyed adventures?
“What?” Brenda asked.
I wasn’t ready to concede what now hammered at my mind. “Oh, nothing.”
“So what’s next?” Tank asked, clearly assuming that we would be doing whatever it was together and, of all things, turning to me for leadership. Some things were just unavoidable.
“Aunt Edna.”
CHAPTER
9
Aunt Edna
Aunt Edna had much to deal with and, consequently, was inconsolable. The upside was she was talkative, especially as we recounted Andi’s condition, our own encounters with glowing spheres and orbs, what happened to Abby, and the strange almost-encounter with the dolphin. “Oh my, oh my, oh my! It’s the end. We’re being invaded! It’s aliens from outer space!”
To the facts, I thought. “You said your nephew had pets: three cats, two dogs.”
“A yellow lab, a chocolate lab, a white cat, a black cat, a mangy cat . . .”
“Any idea where those pets are?”
“No, and that’s the truth,” she said. “But the yellow lab, Boris . . .” She hesitated.
“You can tell us,” Tank urged.
“Boris got snatched by the UFO, just like your Abby. But he came back alive. His eyes were gone, but he was still alive, like that dolphin! He came home and ran right into my nephew’s room as if he could see where he was going, and after that . . . that’s when my nephew started acting crazy.”
“And Boris?”
“Disappeared. Except . . .”
“Go on.”
She nodded toward her nephew’s room. “Right after Boris came home, the aliens started snooping around the house, shining their blue lights in the windows and scaring us, and then . . . that brown powder. My nephew had it on his shoes; he was tracking it around the house. There was brown powder, but no Boris. And then my nephew got crazy.”
“The, uh, aliens . . .” I approached the topic gingerly. “Do you mean orbs? Spheres of light?”
She nodded, trembling with fear. “They were watching us, watching him, and then, when he wouldn’t come out of his room, they went looking for him. One came right into the house, searching all around with a blue spotlight. It was like we were animals in the zoo, or, or, fish in a fish bowl, or . . .”
“Or
specimens being studied,” I said, recalling words the nephew had used.
“Yes! Yes, exactly!” She sobbed, and her whole body shook. “They’re going to take over. We’re all gonna turn to powder!”
As we left Aunt Edna’s home, we grappled with what to do, how to help her. We could call the police, but what on earth could we or Aunt Edna tell them that they would even believe, and given the incomplete smattering of information we had so far, what could we do? There was no good news, none at all.
And then there was Andi. “If this fungus is the central cause in all of this,” I said, “then Andi has it too—and now we know where she got it.”
“From Abby,” lamented Tank. “Had to be. Andi was holding Abby when she was dead, there on the beach. She was holding Abby, putting her face right up to Abby’s face . . . and I saw it: green stuff in Abby’s mouth, in her eye sockets.” He was near tears. “Man, I had no idea.”
“But you healed her,” said Brenda. She looked at me, insisting. “He did heal her!”
“Well, God did,” said Tank.
“But not before the fungus passed from Abby to Andi,” I said, “no matter how the ‘healing’ happened.”
“But what about Daniel?” Tank said, worry in his voice. “He was there. He put his face right against Abby’s.”
“He’s all right,” Brenda answered.
I asked, “How do you know?”
It seemed she had to formulate an answer. “Oh, I’ve been checking in on him.”
“Hey,” Tank asked me, “do you think Mathis tried to set you up, get you infected by that dolphin?”
“I intend to ask him,” I said. “But first we’ll check on Andi. If this infestation follows any consistent pattern . . .” I couldn’t think it, much less say it.
CHAPTER
10
Aloysius
As we drove near the hospital, I thought I recognized a little lady tottering down the sidewalk. Well, no, it couldn’t be who I thought it was. After all, the behavioral health unit was in a secure environment with a big security door to keep all the patients from wandering off. But then . . .
“Hey,” said Tank, pointing at an odd-looking fellow leaning against a building, staring at the sky, “isn’t that a guy from the ward where Andi is?”
We all looked, even as two white-coated staff from that very ward accosted the man and gently but effectively rounded him up.
“Oh no,” I said, pressing the accelerator. “Oh no.”
I parked our car rather sloppily, and we dashed in to find the unit in chaos. Orderlies were dashing about, Dr. Lawrence was barking orders, a red light was still flashing. Security guards were going here and there, jabbering into walkie-talkies that hissed and squawked back.
We approached Dr. Lawrence. He was consulting with Physician’s Assistant Matilda Fornby who, strangely, was being held in a chair by two orderlies.
We hardly had to ask a question when we heard the babble coming out of Fornby’s mouth: “Oh, yes, Doowano, god of great wisdom! All things serve all things, and those things that serve serve in return, to the end that oneness comes and we are the cosmos . . .”
“What happened here?” I asked Dr. Lawrence.
Dr. Lawrence’s mind and attention were desperately occupied everywhere else as he tried to fit in an answer. “Fornby’s out of her mind. She opened the security door and half the patients have wandered off.”
“What about Andi?”
“She’s gone. But don’t worry, we’ll find her.” And then he was heading elsewhere. “ALLAN! Get a head count! Julie? Julie! Do we have the police on the line? Speak up!”
Roberto the orderly came racing by. I had to take his arm to stop him. “Are there any pets in the ward?”
He looked at me as if I were the worst of the patients. “What?”
“Pets. Dogs, cats?”
That finally registered. “Aloysius!”
The man was still preoccupied, hearing orders, trying to choose actions. I had to shake him. “Who? WHO?”
“Aloysius,” he answered, looking down the hall. “The cat. We had a pet cat. But we had to confine it because it got sick.”
“What do you mean, sick?”
“It went blind. Somehow . . . it lost its eyes.”
What a feeling: our enemy, whoever or whatever it was, was several steps ahead of us. “Where is that cat?”
Of course Roberto had other things to do, but I managed a grim enough look to convince him. He started down the hall. “Come on.”
We followed as he jingled through his keys. “Fornby was taking care of it and put it in here until the vet could come take a look—” The door he spoke of, marked MAINTENANCE, was already open. “Oh, great!” he said.
And then he screamed. So did Brenda. I’m sure I must have, but I only remember hitting the floor with all the others as an orb, as real as anything, defying gravity, floated out through the doorway, rotated 180 degrees, and shined a blinding beam of blue light into the room. Then it rotated and fixed its lens on us. We cringed, curled, covered our heads.
Having a good look at us must have been enough. It rotated, flew down the hall, and went out through a window it had apparently broken to get in.
“Madre de Dios!” Roberto exclaimed.
I was too shaken to stand, so I crawled to the door. Tank and Brenda got to their feet, though shakily.
Inside we saw the cat’s basket on the floor, but now, save for a few shreds of calico fur on the pillow, nothing remained but a thick circle of green powder fading to brown.
Roberto helped me up. I asked him, “Where . . .” I had to gather myself and take another breath. “Where did that cat come from?”
“It was a gift, something to help cheer up the patients.”
“From whom?”
“A friend of Matilda’s. Uh, Dr. Mathis, that scientist from the aquarium.”
CHAPTER
11
Mathis
I was too stressed, too preoccupied to drive. I rode shotgun while Brenda did the driving. We were heading for the aquarium for an unannounced visit with Dr. Mathis.
“Help me,” I said. “We’ve got to get this sorted. We have to have something, anything, before we get there. Brenda. Any pictures, images?”
“You mean, you’re gonna trust me?” she asked with her typical raised eyebrow.
This time I cursed. Only Brenda—only Brenda—could bring that out of me. “Must we get into that now?”
“A flashlight,” she said, her eyes on the road. “Well, not a flashlight. A big flashlight. A spotlight kind of thing.”
“That’s it?”
She rolled her eyes with impatience. “Well, it was a blue light, okay? But Aunt Edna talked about the orbs usin’ blue light and then we saw that orb use a blue light and maybe that’s makin’ me see things, I dunno.”
“Tank? Anything?”
“‘Turned to powder,’” he said from the back seat. “What Aunt Edna said. She’s got it right. This fungus takes over until fungus is all there is.”
I nodded, sickened by the conclusion. “The fungus consumes the victim: the nephew’s dog, the nephew, Aloysius the cat . . .”
Andi. I couldn’t say it. I covered my face. “Oh God . . .”
“Yeah,” said Tank. “Don’t worry, He’s in the loop.”
I wanted to lash out at his simple faith, his pat answer, but in that instant the thought of Andi brought another thought. “Do either of you know Morse code?”
Brenda shook her head.
“I do,” said Tank. “I learned it in the Boy Scouts.”
“The other night Andi tapped out a pattern. Maybe it was Morse code.”
“That’d be Andi,” said Brenda. “Her head’s full of stuff like that.”
By now I had the pattern memorized. “Four dots and a dash. Four dashes and a dot. Five dashes.”
Tank winced, searching his memory. “Oh man . . .”
“Tank, remember!”
“Uh, uh
, uh, it’s uh, numbers. Um . . . OH! Dit-dit-dit-dit-dah, that’s the number 4. And dah-dah-dah-dah-dit, that’s 9. And five dashes is zero. Four Nine Zero.”
I sighed in exasperation. “Oh, Andi. You and your numbers!”
“Prof,” said Brenda, “they always mean somethin’.”
“Well,” said Tank, “what was happening when she did it?”
I replayed it in my mind. “You’d just left with Abby . . . the orbs appeared outside the window . . . Oh my God!”
“Yep, it’s Him again.”
“Blue light!”
“Keep goin’,” said Brenda.
“Blue light. The orbs use a blue light.” A lightning bolt hit me. “OH! Fungus. Light. The fungus was discovered in caves, in the dark.”
“And Andi always wanted the room dark.”
“And light, blue light, is known to kill some species of fungus.”
“Hey,” said Tank, seeing some light of his own, “those orbs weren’t searching around Aunt Edna’s house with blue lights. They were cleaning up, killing the leftover fungus!”
I turned and looked at him. Brenda looked at him through the rearview mirror.
“Tank . . .” I said, a little ashamed to be so shocked. “That’s brilliant—no pun intended.”
Tank’s countenance lifted several degrees, and he kept going. “Boris the dog brings the fungus in, he pops open, spilling fungus everywhere—gross!—the fungus infests the nephew. The orb shines blue light through the window and kills the leftover fungus. It turns brown, the nephew tracks it around the house on his shoes. Then . . . oh brother . . .”
Brenda picked it up. “The nephew bursts.” She winced. “The fungus spills all over his room and, you know, finishes up the nephew. The orbs go through the house killin’ the fungus so it doesn’t spread. We find dead fungus all over his room, but not him.”
“Same thing at the hospital!” said Tank. “The cat had the fungus, it infested Fornby, then it . . .”
“Yes, yes,” I said, “go on.”
“And that’s why we saw the fungus and a little bit of the cat in the cat’s bed. Gross.”
“But!” I completed the thought. “The orb was there to kill that fungus with a blue light, and we saw it dying.” My heart was quickening. “So there’s definitely a purpose, a mind, a technology behind all this. The orbs must be like drones—remote eyes, remote tools. They observe the infestation and control any spillovers with blue light. AND! Getting back to Andi’s number, 490. That would be a wavelength in the blue range of the spectrum. It could be the specific wavelength of the blue light: 490 nanometers.”
The Assault: The Revealing, Infestation, Infiltration, The Fog Page 10