by Terry James
“And, were you frightened?”
“How can one keep from being frightened?”
Both were silent for a second before she spoke.
“Bob, who are they? What are those things?” Her questions came in a breathless burst.
“They--are friends. They are going to make this nation the absolute authority over all who would oppose…”
Cooper caught his fiery euphoric climb and quenched it.
“And I--we, dearest Gwendolyn, will see to it that that power is implemented correctly.”
“But, they are intimidating. So, unsettling.”
“They are with us,” he interrupted.
“What is happening to Dan? What are they doing?”
“Just a little pre-conditioning. Nothing to be concerned about,” Cooper said.
“What’s it all about, Bobby?” She wrapped her arms around him and pressed against him. Their lips locked, their passions rising with each lust-driven kiss. Cooper pulled away.
“There will be time for us, Gwendolyn,” he said, his eyes taking on a faraway look. He turned from her to let his innermost thoughts pierce into one dark corner of the office. He said, “The time is quite near. I can feel it in my bones.”
The minister writhed on the bed, wrestling with the pillow and the sheet that covered him. The air conditioner was out, and it was sweltering, the humidity at its highest point of the spring.
Christopher Banyon emerged from sleep and sat on the edge of the bed. He got up and went to the kitchen to retrieve a cold pitcher of tea from the refrigerator. He leaned inside the box, enjoying the cold air. He wished the church would fix the blasted thing, but he had no right to say anything about the problem, other than to report it broken, which he had done.
They had been very kind to him. When he announced his resignation, they insisted that he live in the church-owned home until he and Susie were married in two days, on June 6. The new bride and groom would then go on a brief honeymoon to the south, to Padre Island, and return to live in an apartment, which Randall Prouse had arranged only yesterday.
It would be nice to have the air conditioner working, he thought, sipping from the pitcher.
He hoped--prayed--that he hadn’t made a terrible mistake leaving the church. Was it really God’s will? Or was it just a lust for some sort of weird adventure? Where to begin?
He put some ice cubes in a glass and moved with the pitcher and the glass to the little kitchen table.
Had he let Randall Prouse talk him into it? Into leaving the pulpit to pursue…what?
Bene elohim? Fallen angels? Was he nuts? Was he really going to take his sweet, loving bride on a hunt for demons?
No question that it seemed ridiculous at this moment. Three-thirty on a humidity-soaked, air-conditionless Texas morning, sitting sipping iced tea and thinking about chasing spiritual beings.
But, this was the first time he had had serious second thoughts. The mission had been clear in his mind. He and Randall had discussed it at length on many occasions. Susie--sweet, loving Susie--trusted him completely to make the right choices.
Why had they left without a trace? Laura, Lori, and Mark Lansing? Why had they not contacted him? Didn’t Laura need her pastor to at least help them comfort her and Lori?
But, he was no longer a pastor.
“Feed my sheep.” The voice played again in his mind, the wind-like voice that said, “Feed my sheep.”
“A watchman watches; watch, therefore for the bene elohim,” he heard again within his mind the words spoken over a telephone line that was out of commission.
Christopher bowed his head. “Oh, Lord,” he said in prayer, “please guide. Help me to trust in you with all my heart, to lean not unto my own understanding. Help me to acknowledge you in all my ways. And, dear Lord, please direct my—our--paths.”
The ringing telephone shattered his meditation.
“Oh! Not another call on the phone, dear Lord,” he said, smiling at his own words.
“Hello,” he said, halfway expecting to hear the wind-driven voice on the line.
“Chris!”
“Randy--”
“I know, it’s three thirty. Sorry to call at this hour. But, I can’t keep this to myself.”
“What’s wrong?” Christopher said, his heart racing. It must indeed be important for Randall Prouse to call at this hour.
“They’ve found something in the scrolls!”
“The scrolls? What scrolls?”
“The Dead Sea Scrolls, the ones found at Khirbet Qumran in 1947!” Prouse exclaimed.
“What have they found?”
“Get Susie packed, Chris. We’re off to Israel!”
Chapter 11
A song played, almost inaudible, but growing in volume.
Jesus loves the little children,
all the children of the world.
Red and yellow, black and white,
they are precious in his sight,
Jesus loves the little children of the world…
Lori breathed deeply, taking in the salty sea air that seemed to bring to her ears the music of her young childhood. She looked into the Gulf of Mexico while she stood on the orange sand of South Padre Island. The blue-green Gulf water turned gray with the opaque mist that coagulated somewhere off shore and moved toward the beach.
She shut her eyes, trying somehow to cause the oncoming fog to dissipate. It worked! When she again opened her eyes, she now faced the University of Texas Tower, its top almost engulfed, shrouded by the same gray mist that had before rolled across the water.
The music began again, but the song was another.
Jesus loves me, this I know,
for the Bible tells me so.
Little ones to Him belong,
They are weak, but He is strong…
The song’s volume increased, and echoed, as if sung within an empty 50-gallon drum. Her eyes were drawn upward toward the façade of the tower. To a large window, where a dark figure glared down at her, a hulking man with huge binoculars held to his eyes.
She tried to break free from a strange, vacuuming wind that sucked her toward the dark giant with the binoculars.
Again, surroundings changed, and the music grew deafening before it suddenly stopped. Small gray humanoid figures surrounded her bed and grasped at her, and she sat in the bed pulling her hands and nightgown from them while they reached toward the center of the bed to snatch at her with thin, tentacle-like fingers.
Lori awoke, startled, her eyes opened wide, the vividness of the nightmare still reverberating throughout her gathering consciousness.
She was alone. She turned the small stem of the nightstand lamp and was reassured to confirm that there were no small, gray beings. She smiled slightly. The man with the binoculars was gone; the gray creatures were gone. But, while she turned off the lamp and settled back to the pillow, the remembered songs replayed in her head, and they brought pleasant memories of her few visits to Sunday school years before.
Jesus loves the little children,
all the children of the world…
Taos underground complex, June 2, 1967
Gessel Kirban flipped on the light switches in his spacious laboratory. The hour was late, depending on whether one considered 3 in the morning late or early, he thought while picking up a clipboard and lifting pages to look at the statistics his lab assistants had left for him. He ran through in his mind again and again the conversation with his friend in Texas. He hoped he wasn’t leading Randall Prouse astray with the information he had relayed.
Yadin had made a discovery that he hadn’t revealed to anyone. It was just too shocking. So shocking, it couldn’t be legitimate. But, it was real. Kirban could feel it in his core being.
A very fragile fragment, but more legible than most all the fragments found from Yadin De Vaux’s excavations. Plainly in ancient Hebrew, the words: “War in heavens and on earth shall begin the consummation when first scroll words shall be found.”
; There was more, but Kirban couldn’t remember. Didn’t want to strain to do so at the moment. It had been a long day.
The fragment--a prediction? A prophecy? It was a question for the scholars, for the archaeologists and further digs to determine, perhaps.
Yadin depicted the fragment with the words as separate from the Hebrew texts that proved the authenticity of the Old Testament--at least to many scholars’ satisfaction. Of course, there would always be the Allegros of the world who wouldn’t believe, no matter the proof dug up.
The prophesied words, Yadin assured, were in reference to the first discoveries in the cave at Khirbet Qumran in February 1947. But did it mean that the writer predicted the discovery would unleash the wind-up of the great battle between good and evil? Between God and the Devil?
The secret discovery excited Randall Prouse. There was indeed something in the words on the fragment that evoked exhilaration for his archaeologist-friend.
He had called Randy at the request of Yadin. Yadin said Dr. Prouse was needed to help him confirm something or the other. The three of them had been friends from the old days in Jerusalem, and Gessel Kirban was the first person the Arab thought of when the need to try to contact Randall Prouse came up.
The fluorescent lights in the ceiling of the lab flickered.
Unusual. There was never a power problem here, in perhaps the most advanced laboratory in the world.
Kirban shrugged it off, and again began examining the data on the clipboard. After a few seconds, there began a vibration--no, a hum. A low noise. It grew into a distinct droning sound that vibrated the air around him. He had heard many strange noises from time to time in the complex. But never this one.
The scientist turned his head one way, then the other, trying to determine the direction from which the source of the noise was coming.
Kirban walked from the laboratory and into the long hallway off which other labs, like his, were located. The corridor, bathed in dim light, disappeared into the distant darkness.
He turned in the opposite direction, seeing that the corridor that way was brighter. The hum, still at a low decibel, but growing louder, seemed to emanate from the darkened direction.
The directive had been that everyone be alerted when one of the experimental molecular technology labs was in use after hours. For security reasons, only those with clearance for the particular lab to be used were to be allowed in the complex during after-hours usage.
He had received no such alert. He had not been denied access when he came to his own lab for afterhours work. Had there been an oversight? Not likely. There had never been an oversight, to his knowledge. This complex was probably among the top three most secure complexes in the world.
He walked the corridor, his movement eerily silent, except for the rustle of his lab coat. The darkness grew thicker, the farther he progressed, and he wished for the small pen light attached to his key chain--the keys left behind in a drawer in his office two floors above.
He felt the bones of his nasal passages vibrating now, engendering the need to sneeze. The hum was much more pronounced and grew louder while he walked. Still, there was a hint of light, and he peered hard through its strange, misty, iridescence. Movement in the distance stopped him cold.
He blinked, unable to convince himself he had seen the black, human-like form pass from one wall, move across the corridor, then move through the other wall. A chill traversed his spine from top to bottom and rose again to ripple across his scalp.
His imagination? Too many hours in this people-consuming place?
Kirban began walking again, watching for the emergence of another form. He stopped to examine the walls through which the thing had passed seconds before. Nothing unusual. Solid walls. His imagination; had to be…
Within moments, he arrived at a double-doored laboratory. He tried but couldn’t make out the lab’s title on the piece of black plastic. Too dark.
The weird sound, the hum--no doubt about it. It originated from regions beyond these doors.
No need to try putting his card key in the slot. He didn’t have access to this end of the building. He knew few who did have access to the area.
He started to turn to begin walking up the corridor toward his own laboratory. Almost at the same time he did so, he gave the door device a push with his right thumb.
To his great surprise, the door wasn’t locked.
He stuck his head inside, and found the area better lit than the hallway.
“Hello…anyone?” Kirban said above the loud hum, which, once he was fully inside, became an annoying whine.
He maneuvered through several short hallways that branched in many directions, toward the whining hum that now sounded as if it had a heartbeat. The last corridor he entered was even darker than the others, and he felt his way along the right wall with the back of his right hand.
Whatever was making the sound must be expending tremendous energy, Kirban thought, the very air surrounding him seeming to pulse in a strange, rhythmic beat. He was in forbidden regions of the complex, but he couldn’t make himself turn and leave. It was as if the source of the pulsing energy that hummed and whined in the unfamiliar reaches of darkness just ahead was possessed of a vortex that sucked him along, mesmerizing him, drawing him deeper, ever deeper toward its ominous center.
The scientist heard voices. One male, the other female. A shadow-blackened niche in the right wall allowed him to slip unseen into it and press hard against its recesses. Just in time for the two to pass by him in the corridor.
“You say neither of them will remember any of this?” the man said to the woman walking beside him.
They stopped, and faced each other, the woman checking a clipboard she held.
“That’s right,” she said, continuing to thumb through the pages. “The girl will remember only the work she was doing earlier this evening, the work on the RAPTURE.”
“What about the Dimensionals? They insist upon entering the other subject.”
“They are just determining whether the genetic predisposition is as we calculated,” the woman said. “So far, our estimations have been even more accurate than we could have hoped for.”
“Of course, you had the Dimensionals’ work, up front, to make certain.”
“Yes. It’s doubtful they would have insisted on the entries if their calculations and preparations weren’t first figured in. It would be too risky for the subject.”
“It’s my understanding,” the man said while the woman continued checking data on the board, “that the precognition neuro-diviner helped them to prepare the way for testing their…their indwelling.”
“The device opens the mind, especially the cognitive process, to transference of thought that involves decision making based upon surrounding factors of influence.”
“You mean it allows for ideas and decisional thinking--other than the subject’s own thinking--to influence directly?”
“Totally influence,” the woman scientist affirmed. “But, it is as if the thoughts are his alone, based upon factors influencing his decisions.”
“In theological circles, that would amount to possession, wouldn’t it?” the man said.
“Why, Doctor! I didn’t know you could even think in such terms,” the woman said with a stifled laugh.
“Yes, well, my Catholic upbringing, I guess.”
“The Dimensionals are a bit spiritual, I suppose,” the woman said. “But, if it gives us the advantage, I’ll--we’ll--take the help of the Devil, himself.”
A terrible chill of understanding ran through Gessel Kirban’s thoughts, while he watched the two move on down the corridor and turn the corner in the semi-darkness. His own project was but a ruse, designed to cause him and others to miss the real intentions involved.
These non-material beings, the dark, human-like forms that moved through solid walls. What were they? The scientists called them “Dimensionals.” Kirban’s thirst for knowing more overrode his fear, and he moved from the niche, and
farther down the dark corridor.
His heart thumped hard in his chest, keeping pace with the beat within the darkness. He had arrived at the very core source of the palpitating machinery.
He tried the door, thumbing the latch of the door’s handle. Open!
Kirban moved in total darkness, which he welcomed as an accomplice to get near his objective. The area just ahead, within which lay the source of the mystery he was determined to solve.
Two steel doors, having no visible handles for entry, had at eye level a series of small, rectangular clear-glass windows. They were arranged horizontally.
The scientist peered carefully from one corner of the end window on the right. His eyes were drawn to the two people standing at the center of the room with rounded walls. Lights of every color sparked and blinked and strobed outward from their inset positions within the walls.
When his eyes had adjusted to the vision-obscuring brightness, he saw several people sitting in chrome-like, glinting booths. They all wore precognition neuro-diviners upon their heads. All faced the two people standing upon a stainless-steel platform. They, too, wore the helmets.
Several men and an equal number of women performed checks and did other work, moving as they did so throughout the half-spherical chamber. Kirban saw them, then. Perhaps ten dark figures, shaped like humans, but far from being human. They walked through the walls that contained the lights, arose from and descended through the solid tile floors, and emerged from, and ascended through the solid material that made up the room’s ceiling.
The human subjects at the room’s center, almost naked, were young. They faced each other while standing on the gleaming stainless-steel platform, reaching to touch each other with fingertips at various points on their faces and necks. One short, bald man in a white smock apparently gave them instructions on where and when to touch. He then marked on the clipboard he held.
The droning heartbeat sound suddenly stopped. The couple on the platform let their hands drop to their sides. They remained motionless, as the scientist instructing them turned to his left.