by Terry James
Wendel was wrong if he thought she couldn’t walk away from such plush surroundings. She had power with Jenkins, and the potential was positively exquisite: the ultimate aphrodisiac.
The door to the bathroom was open while she looked at her image in the huge mirror, the indirect lighting barely illuminating the large master bedroom behind her. She gently patted her face, holding the towel with both hands. Raising her chin, she continued to dry her slender neck.
When she again opened her eyes to see her image, her heart leaped at what she saw behind her. A dark shadowy figure stood glaring at her, its red eyes glowing ember-like, its long, thick arms reaching toward her.
April twisted, at the same time shrieking as she faced the monstrous thing. But, there was nothing there!
Her heart pumping wildly, she hurried into the bedroom, her panicked mind racing.
Who? What? What was the thing she saw? She did see it! She did!
She searched every corner of the room, and, determining that all was well, slowly made her way back to the bathroom, looking with fearful apprehension into the mirror.
Her eyes widened when she saw the image, and she started to scream, putting the towel to her open mouth. But, in the next instant, she slowly lowered the towel, her face taking on a placid expression. A subtle smile took the place of the look of horror while she continued to stare, unblinking, into the mirror.
Chapter 3
Tuesday, 11:48 p.m.
His latest segment was due in two days. “Phenomena or Phonies?” was the title he wanted for the series. The New York Examiner wanted it titled “Monsters on the Loose!” They were paying the freight; it would be “Monsters on the Loose.”
But, for now it was sleep. He was dog-tired after his flight from JFK, then the reunion with his parents. Despite promising himself a week free from work, he had a full day’s writing tomorrow, so he had to get sleep. Sleep that more and more often evaded him these days.
Information gathered over the past six months swirled slowly within Clark Lansing’s drifting mind, while he lay with the back of his head on the pillow, staring at the ceiling. A slow-motion collage of all he had investigated formed –as it always did—while he sought sleep that tugged at his fatigued brain.
Bruce Wilson’s words echoed for the thousandth time within his memory while he kneaded the bridge of his nose and yawned, the yawn becoming a full-body stretch.
“This series will catch attention for the very reason that the elite snobs at the Times and all the others view all of this as foolishness. Limbaugh is right! They are losing touch –have already lost touch--with the country.”
Wilson had moved about his tiny 31st-floor office in Manhattan that day in September of 2001, gesticulating by flailing his short, thick arms to make his point.
“There’s too many of these reports to be just imagination. Readers want to know the truth about them. Somebody needs to investigate these…whatever they are. Might as well be us,” he had said, appealing to Clark, whom he had used as a free-lancer for three years. Clark’s fascination had grown with the proliferating reports of the creatures called “Bigfoot,” “Yeti,” “Sasquatch,” “the Abominable Snowman,” and other names. There had been the two personal …were they encounters? The first with the creature on the road that night in September of 2001, when the rancher had shown him the footprint near Ketchum. The second, less than a week ago, when camping with two friends in Oregon, near where the creatures had supposedly been spotted. He thought he had photographed the thing that night, while it turned and fled toward a thicket of trees. Like on the road in 2001, it had seemed to vanish in the camera’s flash. And, when he examined the digital camera’s recorded shot, all he found was an image of the thicket.
As intriguing as the personal…encounters…were, however, it was the visceral understanding that the monsters in Idaho and in Oregon were, in some strange way, a part of his life-long nightmares that drove him to find the truth about the things.
Reporting on the War on Terror and the U.S. invasion of Iraq, as well as writing about other news events interrupted his plans to explore the things involved with the nightmares and his encounters. Now, he was back on track, and, after a week’s rest, he would again pursue the story full time. Bruce Wilson and The Examiner were willing to pay, and there just might be a book in the future from researching and writing for the series of articles.
But, for now it was sleep that he needed. Sleep was all that mattered…
Clark felt the veil falling, but still –against his will—his conscious mind wrestled to maintain control. His spiraling thoughts moved from his childhood room to somewhere…somewhere, he didn’t recognize.
His sister, her hair the same colors of the sunlight that reflected off it, ran toward him. She was no more than 6 years old. She ran and ran toward her big brother, who turned to look back at her while she sped after him.
The sky turned a deep gray, almost purple, and a chilling wind replaced the warmth of the field of weeds and flowers through which he trudged, his baby sister trying to catch him.
Again, he turned to look at her, while an icy blast from the impending storm blew against his face flesh. Things became slow-motion, then, Morgan’s arms reaching out to him while she ran, slower, ever slower…
The thing seemed to spring from the weeds behind her –or just to explode into existence-- without warning. A boiling, dark, man-shaped monster. A giant, its black, menacing arms stretched toward the little girl, its huge, powerful hands and fingers grasping her, and lifting her from the field.
He ran after the thing that held his sister, while it moved away at a speed he couldn’t match. His legs were heavy, so very heavy, while the cloud-monster grew smaller and smaller in the distance.
Clark sat upright, blinking his eyes to clear his vision. Another of the nightmares! Just another bedeviling nightmare.
He laid his head against the pillow, trying to regain his sensibility. He was thankful they were just nightmares. Just as much as he wished beautiful dreams were real, he was grateful, now, that the nightmares involving the cloud-like giants attacking his sister were only dreams. The good dreams were rare these days, he thought, sitting on the side of his school-days bed. The nightmares were the norm, and always Morgan was at the center of them.
He stood and rolled his head around to relieve the stiffness of his neck. After a few motions of his arms to limber his body, he walked barefooted into the hall, stopping to flip on the light switch of the room that had been his sister’s.
His mother hadn’t changed things much, and Clark looked around, mentally reminiscing. They had been close for siblings of different gender, and six years apart in age. She was a seventh-grader when he left for his first year at Princeton. She had cried the day he packed off to New Jersey.
He made his way in the dark down the hallway and stairs leading to the first floor, after switching off the light in Morgan’s room.
He hadn’t been hungry at dinner, despite his favorite food of fried shrimp his mother prepared for him. Now, at the hour of almost 3 a.m., he was hungry. It might not be good for his sleep the rest of the morning, but the shrimp called to him from the refrigerator.
Again upstairs, after microwaving the leftovers and grabbing a can of soda from the refrigerator, he sat in front of the laptop that rested on the desk he had used to accumulate a nearly straight-A record during his years at Berklon High School.
The desk lamp’s light made seeing the laptop screen difficult, so he pushed the off button on the lamp’s base. Better…
He scanned his e-mail, deleting 95 percent of the new messages. Mostly junk, he thought, seeing the new e-mail prompt that announced Bruce Wilson’s message. “Someone called for you,” it read.
Clark opened the new message and devoured its typically brief contents.
“Sexy-sounding girl wants to talk to you about your dream,” the first line read. “Don’t think it’s a porn come-on, though… Gave her your e-mail address.”
Clark replied: “Thanks. –Lansing”
He looked over the new messages again. One from Morgan, a few from friends, three or four from familiar sources asking him about his research on Bigfoot sightings. Nothing that smacked of a sexy-sounding girl.
He smiled. Morgan might take exception to that assessment. But, Bruce Wilson knew her voice; the phone call wasn’t from his little sister.
Sleep tugged at him, and his body ached with feverish sensations reminiscent of times when he knew he was coming down with something. He downed a couple swallows of the soda and switched off the laptop. Maybe the e-mail of the girl Wilson told him about would be there when he woke up.
It came quickly. The sleep that sent its wave of nothingness within moments of shutting his eyes. Just as quickly, he was awake again, and he sat on the bed’s edge in the total darkness of the room. But, the room wasn’t dark. A red glow coming from the direction of the desk caused him to strain to determine the strange light’s source.
He stood over the desk and read the words on the otherwise dark monitor screen of the laptop.
“The Kingdom cometh” the text read in crimson letters.
Clark tried to clear his head of sleep, mouthing the three words several times. The screen…how could there be text on a monitor that was inactive? That was turned off?
He looked at the computer again, and the message was gone, the screen again dark. His brain was fully lucid again, having thrown off the drowsiness after awakening. Had he been dreaming? Dreaming that he saw the cryptic message in blood-red text?
Wednesday, Central Park, New York City -3:20 p.m.
The rottweiler strained at the leash, his powerful stride forcing Morgan Lansing to run faster than she intended.
“Jeddy! Peanut!” She shouted, while trying to rein in the canine a bit by pulling on the leather strap around her wrist.
Cleopatra’s Needle jutted 71 feet into the air just ahead, the imposing ancient obelisk standing on Greywacke Knoll, between the jogging path and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The heavy overcast sky gave the 3,500-year-old, 244-ton Egyptian monument an eerie presence. The vacant asphalt path that curved out of site around the bower would be forbidding, but for the rottweiler’s aura of confidence and the protection he provided.
Morgan’s own running slowed when the dog finally got the message.
“Good boy!” she said between puffs of trying to catch her breath. “Let’s walk for a minute,” she added, pulling more firmly on the collar until Jeddy broke the slow trot and began walking. He turned his huge, black-and-tan head to see if his human mother was now okay with the pace.
They rounded the point where the vegetation impinged upon the walker/jogger line of view for continuing down the pathway. “Okay, Peanut! Let’s try again,” Morgan exhorted, both she and the rottweiler breaking into a slow trot.
No sooner had they cleared the area that obstructed their line of sight, then a jogger, headed in their direction, burst into view.
When he saw the dog, he seemed startled, and jumped from the path to his right. His right foot clipped a large stone, and he tumbled headlong into the grass, managing to break the violence of the fall with a controlled, athletic roll onto one shoulder, then into a sitting, upright position.
Morgan stopped, and Jeddy lunged to one side, as surprised as his mistress with the development.
“Oh no!”
Morgan’s gasp of concern made the rottweiler come to her and stand stiffly, while glaring with suspicion at the fallen man. The dog emitted a low, deep growl that was renewed with each breath he took.
“No, Jeddy, No. Mommy is okay,” Morgan assured. Jeddy sat against her leg, but continued glaring at the stranger, who tried to get to one knee, then stand.
She wanted to go and help him but thought better of it.
“You okay?” she asked from the pathway.
The man said nothing, but sat with his feet flat, knees bent upward, exploring his right ankle with his fingertips.
“I--I’m so sorry,” Morgan said, trying to see the problem with the ankle. “Can I do something?”
“I’ll be okay,” the injured runner said, continuing to manipulate the hurt.
She walked to the edge of the jogging path, nearer to the fallen runner. “I’m so sorry,” she said again.
“Why? It wasn’t your fault,” he replied, glancing at her, then starting to rise. “Just a Robbins moment, that’s all.”
“A Robbins moment?” she echoed, reaching to touch and stroke Jeddy’s head to assure him everything was okay.
“Just a clumsy move on my part,” he said, wincing when he tried to put weight on his right foot. He took a few unsure steps, frowning slightly with each.
Jeddy began the guttural growling again, and Morgan held the leather strap tighter, bending to place her hand on his right shoulder and pull him toward her. “No, Peanut, it’s okay.”
“Quite a dog you’ve got there,” the tall man said, looking with a wary eye at the canine, whose dark brown eyes never moved from their fixation upon the runner.
“Rottweiler…beautiful animal,” he said, making him instantly friendlier in the view of Jeddy’s owner.
A very handsome, as well as friendly guy, she concluded. “Thanks. Sorry if we frightened you.”
“No--like I said, just a Robbins moment.”
“Don’t think I’ve heard that,” she said, her blue eyes sparking her inquisitive thoughts.
“That’s just a joke among the Robbins family,” he said, grinning, and mopping his face and arms with a hand towel. “I’m Blake, Blake Robbins.” He walked back and forth, trying to exercise the hurt he apparently felt in his right ankle. “That’s what we always say when we do something stupid: “A Robbins moment.”
“Oh,” she said, liking the funny, self-effacement of the family joke.
“Well?” he asked, drying the sweat on the back of his neck with the towel and glancing into the eyes that looked at him with interest.
“Well, what?”
“What’s yours?”
“My what?” Morgan asked, then realized what he meant by the question. “Oh, I’m Morgan, Morgan Lansing.”
“And this big guy?” Robbins gestured toward the dog.
“Jeddy.”
“I thought you called him Peanut, or something.”
“Oh, that’s just a nickname. His AKC name is Jed.”
“Like Uncle Jed of the Beverly Hillbillies?”
“Well, a little more sophisticated in its significance, I hope.”
“Heck, I like Uncle Jed,” he said, without breaking a smile.
“Okay…” Morgan said, not knowing what else to say.
“We New Yorkers are sometimes a little too sophisticated, don’t you think?”
The question took her off-guard, and she felt uneasy with the straightforwardness of this stranger’s manner. At the same time, his cobalt blue eyes seemed to betray someone with whom it would be easy to be friends.
“Maybe I better not make that judgment. I’m not from New York,” she said, watching him sweep back his thick, black hair with fingers of both hands.
“Do you think you’ll be okay? I mean, is your foot or ankle going to be all right?” Morgan’s question was both out of concern for him, and for the need to get the run in before the afternoon sun got too low.
“Oh, gee, I don’t know,” Blake Robbins said, trying to walk, and limping badly. “I don’t know if I can make it to my car or not.”
“Where are you parked? Maybe we can help get you there,” she said, but really wanting to finish her run, then get to the apartment before dark.
“I’m right over there, 81st and Eastside,” he said, pointing toward the obelisk and the big building behind it.
“You actually drive in this city?”
“Not really. But I do ride in private rather than public transportation,” Robbins said, beginning to limp beside Morgan, who
urged Jeddy to begin walking ahead of them.
“Here, put your arm around my shoulder,” she said, positioning herself beneath his arm and walking slowly behind the dog.
“I really appreciate your help, Morgan. I know you’re not from New York now. Not many people here would give me a shoulder to lean on.”
“I haven’t found that to be true,” she said, watching the grassy terrain that required some careful negotiating to traverse. “New Yorkers are pretty nice people, I think.”
Soon they emerged from the trees and vegetation, and he pointed to a dark car a half-block away. “There we are,” he said.
Morgan saw only a limousine, long and black, parked along the curb.
“Martin!”
Robbins shouted, and raised his left arm, motioning for the limo driver to drive their way.
“A limo?!” Her words were blurted, without thinking about them.
“Yes. Is there a problem?”
The car rolled to beside them, and a man in a chauffeur’s dark uniform emerged from the driver’s side.
“No. I’ve just never known--personally—anyone who rides around in a limo.” She restrained the dog, who stood and stiffened, the growling coming again while the driver walked around the front of the car.
“Well, you’re about to become a person who rides around in one,” Robbins said, taking his arm from around Morgan and reaching for the rearmost door handle. The chauffeur beat him to it and opened the door.
“That is, if you’ll allow me to give you a lift home.”
Morgan said nothing for a few seconds, looking at the handsome face, and considering his offer.
“No, but thanks. I’ve got to finish the run.” She nudged Jeddy to begin their walk back toward the park’s pathway.
“Thanks for the help,” Robbins said, standing beside the open limo door, while the chauffeur held its handle. “Maybe we can see each other again?”
The question wasn’t rhetorical. He was fumbling for words to ask her for a future meeting. She realized that but acknowledged his invitation only by turning her head to look back briefly while she and Jeddy walked toward Cleopatra’s Needle.