The Nephilim Imperatives: Dark Sentences (The Second Coming Chronicles Book 2)

by Terry James

  The sight wasn’t all that strange in Midtown. The loonies and the more serious protestors always hoped for the ever-alert New York press.

  Morgan and Kristi prepared to give the small man a wide berth while they tried to get to the steps leading to the building’s main door fronting Madison Avenue. When they side-stepped to go around him, the man jumped to block their way, his eyes wide, his expression of urgency exaggerated by the heavy wrinkles above a mostly white beard that reached his chest.

  Morgan thought for a moment that he would strike her with the placard he held aloft by a 1 x 3-inch board. It stated in blood-red letters: “The Kingdom cometh!” The man moved forward, causing both Morgan and Kristi to back up. Others surrounding them gawked at the scene that was weird, even by New York City standards. The old man’s expression became even more wide-eyed. He pointed by extending his free arm and the crooked index finger of his right hand at Morgan’s face.

  “Daughter of man! Child of darkness!”

  The old man’s words hissed at Morgan, who could only stare back at him with a puzzled gaze, her face emotion-reddened beneath the straw-yellow hair. The words seethed at her again, in a steam-like whisper. “Daughter of man…Child of darkness…”

  The robed man seemed to choke, his eyes bulging. He dropped the placard to the concrete and grabbed his throat with both hands, gagging –his tongue thrusting from the open mouth. His face went from red to almost purple, and he dropped hard to the sidewalk.

  Morgan stood staring down at the fallen man while the onlookers gathered around them.

  “Come on, Morgan.” Kristi tugged her friend from the crowd. “Let’s get out of here.”

  Thursday, 7:05 a.m., near LA

  He had been unable to link to the Net since 5 a.m. Clark Lansing tried unsuccessfully for it seemed like the one hundredth time to get someone on the line to explain and fix the problem. Finally, he was informed that it was a regional problem that had nothing to do with his computer.

  He cursed almost inaudibly, pushing himself away from the laptop. There was so much research and writing to do…so much.

  He paced the bedroom carpet, trying to draw upon facts he had filed in his mind. Where to go next with the story?

  When he heard the e-mail chime, he clenched his fists and punched the air. “Yes!”

  He sat again and moved to beneath the tabletop. The first e-mail prompt to meet his eyes was from an address he hadn’t seen. A rush of excitement bathed his tired brain.

  “The creatures–your book-- need to talk.”

  Clark opened the e-mail and devoured the message in a quick scan.

  “There is a story the American public must know–involving the giant creatures –your nightmares. I’ll call again at 9 a.m. Thursday, Pacific Time.”

  The girl! She would call in… Clark checked his wrist for the watch that wasn’t there, then looked to the electric clock behind the laptop. “7:10,” he considered, hating the thought of having to wait an hour and 50 minutes to hear again from the young woman who had cut the conversation short the night before, the person who said she worked for a dark project within a clandestine agency of the U.S. government.

  His brain reeled from the things his mother and father had told him and now thoughts of what this woman –apparently a DOD leaker—wanted him to know. He had come home for a few days to reflect and finish the story that was already all but written. This sudden surge could constitute information overload. The vacation was over before it began…

  His anxious pondering was short-circuited by his cell phone ringing.

  His sister’s name and cell number popped on the tiny screen.

  “Morgan?”

  “Yep. It’s me!” Morgan sat between a drawing board and her small desk, a plastic cup of Coca-Cola between the fingers and thumb of her left hand.

  “You okay?” her brother’s inflection made her know the early morning call was troubling to him.

  “I’m okay. Just had to talk to my big brother for a minute.”

  “Good. I’m glad,” Clark said, pleased more than she could realize that she had called him.

  “Just wanted you to know that I’ve slept on it, and decided I’ll stay with the agency. At least for a while.”

  “Good. That’s really good,” he said without considering the enthusiasm in his voice.

  “Well, I thought you wanted to see me!” Her tone was playfully chiding.

  “Oh, no, sis. It’s just that my life has suddenly become a bit chaotic, and I’m going to have to leave. I’m waiting on a call now. I’m sure I’ll have to do some traveling, so wouldn’t be here for you…”

  “Where are you going?”

  “Honestly, I don’t know, yet. Got this mysterious call from this person about the things I’ve been researching for the story, and, hopefully, for a book.”

  “The hairy giant things?”

  “Yeah. A woman in some government office –a DOD person, I take it--wants to tell me things that she says the public needs to know.”

  “The DOD?”

  “Department of Defense,” Clark said. “I really don’t know more than that. But, I’ll let you know once I can. We’ll get together in New York as soon as I can get back. Got a lot to tell you –things Dad and Mom have told me about these nightmares, all of that.”

  “I’ve got some pretty weird things to tell you, too,” Morgan said then sipped hard on the Coke. “This old man… dressed like some Old Testament guy--a prophet or something. Out of all the people on the sidewalk in front of the building this morning, he picked me out. He stood in front of me, pointed a finger in my face, and called me something like, “daughter of man, child of Satan…or the Devil.” I can’t remember what. Then…” Her voice choked with emotion. “Then he fell to the sidewalk. I don’t know if he fainted, or died, or what.”

  Clark said nothing, awaiting his sister’s next words. She broke the silence, remembering more details.

  “He held a sign, you know, tacked to a board--like one of those political placards. It had painted on it ‘The Kingdom Cometh’.”

  Clark felt a strange flush of anxiety ripple through his emotions. He saw again in his mind’s eye the blood-red sentence on the black, lifeless screen: “The Kingdom Cometh”.

  Twenty-three minutes later, Clark sat composing the finishing touches on the block of writing he had assigned himself. The rest of the three hours he had set out for work on the project would be spent searching the Net for specific accounts of encounters with the creatures called Bigfoot, Yeti, Sasquatch, and other names, depending on the area of the world where people allegedly had the encounters. Of course, anything that one might find on the Internet was suspect. He would have to carefully follow up with phone calls and e-mails. He would save the trail for the most likely to produce proof of what was reported.

  Bruce Wilson wouldn’t mind the expense of travel, if the result was, at a minimum, spectacular. The editor of The New York Examiner preferred that expenditure for travel produce stupendous results, but he would settle for the mere spectacular. Travel, at the moment, didn’t appeal to Clark. Especially not to Nepal, where one intriguing report had it that a mid-mountain climbing camp had been destroyed by at least two 10-foot tall creatures. The Cherpahs could only scream “Yeti!” according to the British climbers, who all witnessed the things disappear into the heavy snowfall after wrecking the camp. The Himalayans held no attraction in his wanderlust during his usual love of travel, and certainly not now. Even the Fouke monster reports were more alluring than traveling half-way around the planet to trek the freezing mountains of Nepal. Yes, the swamps of south Arkansas would be preferable.

  The cell phone rang, snapping his thoughts to the call he had been waiting for. Yes! The area code displayed was that of D.C.

  “Clark Lansing,” he answered, trying not to sound anxious.

  “This is the person who called--about things going on with this technology.”

  “Yes, I recognize your voice,” Clark said, re
aching for a ballpoint and note pad. He wished he had prepared to record the woman’s words. But, he couldn’t risk her having devices that would detect such recordings –thus likely cause her to refuse to talk.

  “Please listen carefully, Mr. Lansing. I have only a few seconds to tell you where to come to…observe this travesty. Are you prepared to take this down?”

  “Yes. Proceed.”

  The young woman’s inflection betrayed that she was reading the information. She gave the directions for two minutes, then warned: “This won’t be easy to do, Mr. Lansing. But being as discreet as possible is critical. They mustn’t know you are watching. Do you understand?”

  “Yes, I understand. But, will there be anyone who can give me specifics? Show me the area, so I don’t give away my position? I know nothing of Colorado wilderness areas. I’ve never been there…”

  “Just get to Alamosa as quickly as you can. You will receive help from there.”

  “Alamosa” he said, scribbling the instruction. He started to speak again but heard a click. She had hung up.

  New York City 6:28, EST

  Jeddy lay near Morgan’s chair while she stroked the keys on the computer keyboard. The crunching sounds while the powerful jaws gnawed the nylon bone made her turn to the dog.

  “Peanut, we are going to have to get you some quieter bones to chew on.”

  The rottweiler stopped chewing and raised his ears in a quizzical look, then, determining “Mommy” was just making idle chit-chat, went back to gnawing the bone he held between his huge front paws.

  Alan Cranston had asked her to do something she didn’t think she could handle. Why did she agree to do it?

  He probably just wanted to make her forget her anger over being propositioned by an executive of one of the agency’s best-paying client companies. Probably had nothing to do with wanting her to give ideas on the dog food account because she was somewhat knowledgeable about dogs.

  Still, the idea that they might use the Peanut in a commercial was appealing. Her father always teased her by saying that the honors her beloved rottweilers won at the dog shows were really her victories, not the dogs’. She was a bit competitive, she surmised, smiling inwardly at remembering her dad’s fun-poking.

  Alan wanted some ideas for how to pitch the company. He needed her input on a creative concept for the company’s next new campaign. She had about a week. Why had she agreed to take on the project? She might be selected as account executive for the company’s campaign, but did she want that kind of pressure?

  She mentally chastised herself for having such a slothful attitude. Her father and mother would never approve of such laziness.

  A Mozart masterpiece chimed on her cell phone, and she moved to the sofa to retrieve the phone from her purse.

  She didn’t recognize the number but decided to answer.

  “Hello?”

  “Is this Morgan? Morgan Lansing?”

  The voice--it couldn’t be! How could he know?

  “Yes.”

  “This is Blake Robbins. Remember? From the park?”

  “Oh, yes. The guy with the sprained ankle.”

  “The same. I was worried I wouldn’t be able to find you.”

  “And, how did you?”

  “It’s a long story, and I’ve only got a minute. Mind if I tell you the details later?”

  Morgan didn’t respond, hurried thoughts crisscrossing within her mind.

  “I hope there will be a later, that you’ll let me see you again. Do you think that’s possible, Morgan? I really want to see you again.”

  Blake Robbins was a man of straightforwardness. It would normally be off-putting, but his inflection told her –or she thought it told her—that there was nothing ego-centric in his questions.

  “Maybe… I don’t know. Yes, I suppose it’s possible,” she stammered, thinking how very much like an ambivalent female she must sound.

  “I’m interpreting that as a ‘yes’.”

  Silence again.

  “We can meet wherever you say. Or, I’ll pick you up. Whichever is best for you,” Robbins said.

  “Okay, I’ll meet you at … Westside Restaurant. It’s on the northeast side of Broadway -- 2020 Broadway, at 69th Street. You know where that is?”

  “I’ll find it.”

  The line was again silent, before he broke in.

  “Could you make it in an hour and a half?” Robbins said.

  “An hour and a half? I…I think so,” she said, her mind again reverberating with the rush of thoughts.

  “Great! See you there at 8. Thanks for agreeing to meet me. Bye.”

  “Goodbye,” Morgan said hesitatingly, looking through a dazed expression at her cell phone while she closed its case.

  Lori stood at the open closet door inspecting her son’s clothes by holding a hanger by its hook and rubbing her thumbnail over a spot she thought she had found.

  “Is there no way you can put off this trip for a day or so? These things need to go to the cleaners.”

  “They’ll be okay, Mom. I’m used to hopping to when the boss man says ‘jump’. There’s hardly ever time to tend to clothes.”

  Clark folded a T-shirt and put it in one corner of the worn, leather suitcase. He picked up a pair of briefs and folded them carefully before placing them on the T-shirt.

  “Well, they should at least give you a little time,” Lori said, trying to remove wrinkles from her son’s blazer with sweeps of the palm of her right hand.

  “Does this trip have something to do with the Bigfoot investigation?”

  She walked beside Clark and placed the blazer on top of the cheap clothes bag lying flat on one side of the bed.

  “Somewhat, I guess. The person said the things she wanted me to learn involved my nightmares –the creatures, that sort of thing.”

  “How could she know that? I mean, how could she know about the nightmares?”

  “Don’t know… I guess I must have mentioned them in a story somewhere. I don’t remember. Probably did…”

  “Daddy and I are worried about you going to look at something to do with government secrets. We’ve got some experience in those things, remember. The creatures, they’re real. But, they aren’t some form of life that is…the kind of life everyone thinks they might be.”

  Lori laid her face against her son’s back and embraced him in a lingering hug, while he continued to look at arm’s length at a shirt that he was folding.

  “They are spirit, not flesh and blood, son. Inter-dimensional, not terrestrial, or extra-terrestrial.”

  “Well, whatever they are, I’m going to get the story, if a story is to be gotten. You worked in molecular biology, Mom. You always gave it all you had, right?”

  He put the shirt in the suitcase, then turned to hug his mother with both arms.

  “You uncovered some things they don’t want us to know. Then they put you and Dad in a box of silence. I’m going to open that box. Find out the truth about these things, about the nightmares.”

  Lori reached to her son’s neck and pulled his head down, then kissed his cheek.

  “These things are not earthly monsters, Clark. They’re monsters beyond any you can imagine. You must not approach them without the Lord going before you.”

  Mark returned his mother’s kiss by pecking her on the cheek. “Mom, I’ll follow in your and Dad’s footsteps in pursuing these things as far as I can. But, don’t ask me to accept that religious stuff. We’ve been through all that.”

  “We took you to Sunday School and church. What happened?”

  Lori looked into Clark’s eyes, tears forming in hers.

  “Why do you and your sister not believe?”

  “It’s not your fault, Mother. You and Dad did the Christian thing. You raised us in church. But, when the professors at Princeton addressed the fallacy of religion, of all religions, not just Christianity, all of that stuff in Sunday School looked…I’m sorry Mom, don’t get upset. It just all started to look pretty fried. I�
�m sure Morgan feels the same way.”

  Lori wiped the tears from her face with her sleeve. “That’s what I thought, too, but your grandmother didn’t give up. She prayed for me. She’s praying for you, son. And so am I.”

  “Sorry to get you out tonight, but didn’t think you would refuse, because I know you’re dying to see this guy.”

  “You know it!” Kristi Flannigan said, her eyes wide with delight. “You mean he called you, and you never gave him your cell number?”

  “A little scary, huh?”

  “Not if he’s made of the studly stuff you describe, girlie. Nothing scary that I heard in your critique.”

  “Well, maybe my assessment was off. Hope you aren’t disappointed,” Morgan said while they stepped off the curb onto the 69th Street crosswalk.” All I knew is that I wasn’t going to meet him alone,” Morgan said.

  “I’m not Peanut, but maybe I’m frightening-looking enough to keep him from assaulting you.”

  “Yeah, well, he’s probably a serial killer, with my luck in men,” Morgan said, while they moved onto the sidewalk.

  Morgan and Kristi walked through the restaurant’s main entrance, while Blake Robbins sat watching them from the back of the dark limousine just out of their sight. The chauffeur glanced into the rearview mirror.

  “Sir?” he said in a British accent. There was no response to the implied question while the driver looked at Robbins’ face. His eyes appeared to be black, his pupils fully dilated.

  “The time is not yet. Drive on,” he said in a growling voice that sounded as if it reverberated within an echo chamber.

  Chapter 5

  Colorado, Friday, 10:35 a.m.