The Rapture Dialogues: Dark Dimension (The Second Coming Chronicles Book 1)

by Terry James

  This evening she had dimmed the main lights to zero by turning the rheostat switch on the wall near her booth-like office space. The only lights remaining were one 50-watt bulb in a glass-enclosed covering above the cabinet where typing and other office supplies were kept and a red light above the door that was the exit from the suite that contained the four private rooms.

  Julia Rameriz, a nurse who had been in the employ of the federal government since 1958, stuck her head in from a door that led to a hallway. She didn’t see her friend, so figured she had left for a snack break. She would go to the small snack bar several corridors away.

  A second thought struck. She had better first look into the patients’ rooms. Perhaps her friend was in one of the rooms.

  She walked past the nurses’ station and looked first into the room where Gessel Kirban lay, his body attached to several intravenous tubes.

  She then moved the few feet to the door where Laura Morgan lay unmoving, like Kirban, hooked to several tubes and monitoring wires.

  The nurse started to turn to leave but caught out of the corner of her right eye a dark, moving shadow that seemed to emerge from the cream-colored wall.

  Her eyes widened, her mouth opened to scream, while her hands shot to her mouth in terror.

  The black, boiling mass stepped the rest of the way through the wall, peering at the nurse, who could neither scream nor move.

  The thing’s head, she could see through her own transfixed stare, glared at her, two slits widening to reveal eyes that glowed like red-hot embers. The being sparked small flickers of what looked to be electrical energy, and it towered almost to the ceiling while it looked at the woman.

  She then relaxed, her hands moving from her mouth to her sides, her demeanor displaying that she was completely oblivious to the creature’s presence.

  The black, whirling mass shaped like the human form moved toward the bed and Laura. It moved through the mattress, then began to lie precisely as Laura lay, placing its back upon her full-length.

  When its back had entered no more than an inch through Laura’s flesh, a tremendous flash of light, accompanied by crashing, crackling sounds lit the room brightly.

  The nurse stared at the scene, through eyes whose pupils were opened to full dilation.

  The dark form spasmed, going from lying atop the comatose woman to standing in a crouched-for-battle position near the wall it had entered. Its long, vortex-like arms thrust forward. Its lengthy, stiletto-like fingers clenched and opened, then clenched again. Its entire black, boiling body began to pulse with flickers of light.

  The room’s darkness burst with light. The air about the nurse’s head crackled and popped with energy, and a supernatural wind blew from the light’s center.

  The dark form had escaped through the same wall it had entered. The light grew in brilliance until nothing was visible to Julia Rameriz’s eyes. Then the light began retracting, until it formed a single ball of sun-like light while it hovered at Laura’s bedside.

  The nurse’s body seemed to again become supple, unleashed from the paralyzed state it had endured since the moment the dark form had emerged from the wall. Still, she seemed to have no will of her own. She stared straight ahead, while she walked slowly, almost robotically, to the side of Laura’s bed where were connected all the medical support wires and tubes.

  The glowing ball of light pulsed, all the rainbow seemingly wrapped around its core, while it urged the nurse to do its bidding. Julia carefully, methodically, removed the intravenous tubes, and then detached the monitors from Laura’s thin, dissipated body. The coma had done its debilitating work, and Laura’s muscles had already atrophied to the point the doctors questioned whether she would ever regain their usage to any extent. Certainly not to the normal range of use, they had determined.

  The nurse finished her task and moved again to a position near the doorway. She stared at the ball of light. The swirling ball of light glided to above Laura Morgan’s body. A million laser-like beams of lights of every color streamed from the sphere into her body at every point of her flesh.

  Even in her transfixed state, Julia knew at this moment she didn’t want to leave. But she did leave and forgot all she had seen.

  Israel, the same hour

  Mark pulled the form-fitting G-suit to his thighs, then struggled against the material of his desert-camo flight suit to tug the expandable material to his waist. He sat on the wooden bench in front of the locker he had been temporarily assigned the day before.

  His stomach crawled. The bench, the locker, even the smell. They evoked vivid memories of the Friday nights before high school games. Recollection of getting ready for the annual rivalries that were part of New Mexico football seasons.

  But this was more akin to the championship game, the one in which he had scored the final touchdown. It was in a losing cause, he remembered with pain. 34 to 7… He hoped today would not turn out to be like that championship game nine years earlier. He pulled one boot on and began lacing it up, then reached for the other. He looked up, when the Israeli officer’s voice caught his ear.

  “We are scheduled for takeoff at 6:50,” the Israeli major, dressed in flight gear like Mark’s, said.

  Mark looked at his watch. It read “05:10.”

  “Nervous, Captain?” the major said.

  “I would be nuts if I weren’t,” Mark said.

  “Good! Glad to know I’m not riding with a crazy man today,” the major said solemnly in accented English.

  He had heard of the Israeli military’s dark humor and their penchant for understatement about the fortunes of battle. About the probability of death in war. The stories were true.

  It was eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow we might die--but so will four times as many of the enemy.

  “Shall we give you a look at our bird?” Maj. David Rashfer said.

  Moments later, both men stood beside the especially equipped F-4, the word “Moshi” painted on the aircraft’s nose.

  “Moshi?” Mark said, looking closely at the fiery red word against the sand-colored paint.

  “Moses,” Rashfer said. “He was the Deliverer. This Moshi will be a deliverer, also--the deliverer of judgment and destruction on Israel’s enemies.”

  Mark, following the major around the aircraft as they pre-flighted it, looked at the windows completely encircling the hangar at the ceiling level. They were covered in black, so that not even a single ray of sunlight could shine through.

  “I’ve never seen a hangar so secured,” he said, scanning the vast space to see armed guards at every door. “Not even at Andrews where the President’s fleet is kept.”

  “Perhaps you and I will know, before this day is out, why this hangar, with this one bird, is so secure,” the Israeli pilot said, bending to inspect the F-4s wheel well.

  Through a swirling mist of smoke, they came at him. Many of them. Their eyes burning, glowing embers set in ovaled blackness.

  They reached for him, tore at his face, his clothing, and his body. He ran naked, his bare feet burning with each strike of his feet upon the lava flow that stretched in the distance as far as he could see. He ran, his knees slowing in their pumping action, as if they had become bogged in a river of thick petroleum. His arms, too, slowed in their pumping, so that his progress was almost at a standstill.

  His pursuers raged just behind, overtaking him. Their long, black, human-like arms outstretched, the tentacle-like fingers reaching, trying to grab him.

  He felt their fiery, sulphurous breath on the back of his neck. A ringing sound caused his eyes to pop open, and he sat up on his side of the bed.

  Christopher Banyon blinked, trying to separate nightmare from reality. The phone rang again, and Susie stirred from her sleep, while she lay beside him.

  “Hello…Yes?” Christopher stammered into the phone receiver’s mouthpiece, still trying to regain sensibility.

  But, he thought, he was still in the nightmare. The voice--not possible.

  “Pa
stor Chris…” The voice, familiar, yet not possible.

  “Is that you, Pastor Chris?”

  Yes! It was Laura Morgan.

  “Laura?”

  “Pastor, I haven’t much time. You’ve got to listen.”

  “Laura? What happened?”

  “A miracle. Two miracles. There’s no time,” Laura Morgan’s voice said.

  “Laura, is that really you? How did you get me here?”

  Susie sat up part way, leaning on elbows, and looked sleepily at her husband.

  “Listen, Pastor. God is at work. Please do what He has told me to tell you.”

  “Yes, okay, Laura; of course...”

  She interrupted him, giving the instruction in an almost robotic fashion. “You must go to the Mount of Olives. To a spot you will be shown. There, pray, until you know the Lord’s will is done.”

  Christopher Banyon was stunned. The woman he thought was near death sounding strong, confident, as if she had a message directly from the Almighty.

  “Laura--how?”

  “God is moving, Pastor Chris. You will know soon. You will know.” Laura Morgan said, and then the minister heard only the steady dial tone.

  Randall Prouse was already awake and dressed. He checked maps and several books that dealt with the history of the scrolls.

  Something was in the air. He knew it. Jerusalem had an indefinable, but undeniable life force. It pulsed with excitement, and the archaeologist, who felt at one with this ancient place, sensed it now as never before. Something was definitely up.

  The phone rang twice, and he lifted the receiver from its console, which sat atop a small nightstand.

  “Randall Prouse,” the archaeologist said, in the manner he always answered a phone call.

  “Randy. It is Gessel. Please listen carefully. There is limited time,” the Israeli scientist said in his familiar accent, causing Prouse’s eyebrows to raise with surprise.

  “Gessel! How did you track me down?”

  “Please, Randy. There is no time. Listen carefully. The Lord God is at work this day.”

  Prouse thought his friend’s voice sounded stiff, unnatural. “Are you okay?”

  “I am better than at any time before. Now. I must tell you of matters of profound importance. Please listen.”

  “Yeah, sure,” the archaeologist said with puzzlement in his voice.

  “They are here, just as the fragments foretell. The…the things are here. I have seen them, have experienced them.”

  “What things? What is here?”

  “The Dimensionals.”

  “Dimensionals?” Randall said, his eyes narrowing in concentration while his brain ran quickly through its files for a connection.

  “I have been told to instruct that you take the preacher, Christopher Banyon, to Mount Olivet. You must go now.”

  “The Mount of Olives? Why? Who told you?”

  “The Lord, Randy. The Lord told me!” Gessel Kirban said with, Prouse perceived, glee in his voice.

  “Laura Morgan and I--we are instructed by the Lord to go to where the Dimensionals do their last days evil.”

  “Are you on something?” Prouse said, still trying to make the connection to the term “Dimensionals” in his convoluting mind.

  “No, friend Randy, I am not on something. Rather, I am onto something!”

  “Laura Morgan? Has she come out of her coma?”

  “More than that. She and I are on our way to investigate what God has to show us.”

  “Why does--the Lord--want me to take Chris to the Mount of Olives?”

  “You will see. Just obey, my friend. There are things, marvelous things the Lord wants you to see!”

  Several men pushed the huge hangar doors so that they rolled steadily on their tracks until the opening was wide enough for at least two F-4 fighters to pass through. A couple of Israeli Air Force troopers brought the yellow tug with a tow bar through the opening. They wasted no time in hooking the bar to the bird’s nosewheel, then backed the tug into place so that the circle connector could be placed over the hitch on the back of the tug.

  Mark and Maj. David Rashfer pulled open the heavy, steel door that separated the hangar from the flight offices. When they entered the briefing room, two men in uniform stopped their conversation to look at the pilots.

  “Gentlemen,” the Israeli colonel said, a solemn expression on his well-worn face. “Please meet Gen. Mordecai Hod,” he said.

  Mark saw all of the stars but knew nothing about the officer. He knew, from Rashfer’s sudden stiff posture, that the Israeli general was a man of importance. How important, he would soon learn.

  “Capt. Lansing, General Hod is Commander of Israeli Forces,” the colonel said matter-of-factly, without aggrandizement in his tone.

  “Just call me Motti,” the man with all the stars said, reaching his hand to take Mark’s.

  “Maybe you had best call me General Motti, major,” the general said with a grin, taking the Israeli pilot’s hand and shaking it vigorously. “We must preserve the privilege of rank.”

  “I shall call you ‘sir,’ if you don’t object,” Rashner said, returning the banter.

  “As will I, sir, if you don’t mind,” Mark said, liking the informality he sensed in this, one of Israel’s great heroes of battle.

  “As you wish, young man,” Hod said, turning back to the colonel. “Up to this point, you have been kept in the dark on the mission. And, I’m afraid you will have to remain in the dark to some aspects,” the colonel said. “However, it is time to reveal what can be revealed.”

  “Capt. Lansing…” the general said, his gray-blue eyes piercing into the American’s eyes, so that Mark felt that the officer was searching his soul. “The aircraft you and the major will take into this mission has technology that even we who are sending you do not completely comprehend.”

  Gen. Hod sat on the edge of the colonel’s desk on one hip, looking at Mark, then at Rashfer.

  “I tell you truly,” Hod said in accented English, “Israeli forces--how do you Americans say it--have our work cut out for us.”

  He stood and paced slowly while he talked.

  “Yesterday, Iraq joined the military alliance with Egypt, Jordan and Syria.”

  The general stepped in front of a map of the region he was addressing. He circled the area with a gesture of his right hand while he talked.

  “Approximately 250,000 Arab troops currently ring the whole of Israel. Nearly half of those forces are in Sinai. They have more than 2,000 tanks and 700 aircraft poised to strike. There is no doubt they shall do so, when their courage is sufficiently bolstered, with the urging of the Soviets.”

  He was silent for a few seconds, searching Mark’s face for signs of concern. He saw none.

  “Captain--Major,” he said, looking to Mark, then to Rashfer. “The technology you have brought with you from the American scientists had better be the equivalent of what the atomic bomb was to the Allies in August of 1945. The odds are that seriously stacked against us.”

  “I have to be honest, sir,” Mark said. “I didn’t have time to do any live practice runs with the helmet. A few hours of simulator practice, but--”

  “I am informed that this technology so takes over the pilot’s senses that the learning curve is instantaneous,” Hod said, interrupting the American.

  Mark was amazed at the statement. Gessel Kirban had said nothing about the fact to which the general was privy.

  “I and the Israeli government have been assured that this is so. Let us pray it is as they say,” Gen. Motti Hod said with clinical assessment.

  “At exactly 7:45, you shall be over your target, leading the I F into Egypt in a preemptive strike that, I pray to God, will end this war before it has a chance to get started.”

  Gessel Kirban led the way, with Laura Morgan close on his heels. Neither had ever felt physically better, and Kirban was amazed at his own lack of concern about the possibility of being discovered while they moved down the darkened corri
dor.

  Laura depended on the scientist to get them to the secret places in the complex. She knew nothing of Kirban, except the things he told her, upon the glowing sphere hovering over him and awakening him from his comatose condition.

  Laura had arisen from her own coma, her muscles’ strength and conscious thought miraculously returned to her in an instant. She then was irresistibly drawn by the sphere into the adjoining room. She was, somehow, made to understand that she must remove from the man’s body the tubes and wires--the same type of medical devices to which she had been connected.

  Kirban told her, after he was again to full health, that he was Mark Lansing’s scientist-mentor. The last thing he remembered was investigating the sounds--the almost painful, but low-level hum coming from the forbidden regions of the Taos underground facility.

  Laura wondered why she had not asked a thousand questions of him. What had happened to her? What was her daughter, Lori, doing here? What about Mark Lansing?

  The last thing she remembered, she had told Kirban, was walking, feeling groggy, into the apartment’s living room. She saw a bright light--then, nothing.

  There was no time for further discussion. The glowing light, its warmth and intense, yet comforting, electrical-like stimulation had overcome their fears. The glow had grown, divided, and completely engulfed them, individually. Each could see the other, watch the glowing force that flowed over and around the other. The aura grew brighter over each of them, while it changed and intermingled with colors neither had ever seen.

  Somehow, the light had permeated even their thoughts. They knew, at the same time, what they must do. Each must make a phone call to Israel, and the numbers to be given the operator, remained etched in their minds, even now, while they followed the light’s innermost directive to go to where Kirban had experienced the unexplainable.

  Both Laura and Kirban wore white orderly clothing, which they found in neatly folded piles when Laura investigated a supply closet just outside Kirban’s room. Laura let the thought run through her mind now, looking far down the long, dark corridor. Not only the medical clothing fit, even the shoes were the right size.