“The boulder is still there?”
“As far as I know it was never moved.”
“If not, then there are three large rocks, one at each place. The Abbey, Rockport, and here in Newburgh in Shanklin’s Pond,” Liz offered thoughtfully.
“Do you think that means something?” Jenna asked. “Or is it just coincidence?”
“I don’t know,” Liz replied. “Maybe Adrian has already made that connection.”
Later that night, after Liz had turned in and with Adrian still asleep near the fireplace, Jenna sat on the stone railing of the bridge. Ben stood next to her. It was the first time in recent days that they had found time to be alone together. Jenna traced constellations with her fingers.
Oh, silent night . . . not a creature stirring. It was not a night for tender kisses and soft words under starry skies. There was an eerie sky already lingering menacingly above the treetops, and both knew something strange was about to happen.
“Look, a falling star, Ben. Maybe a meteor from the Orionid Meteor shower—the one Lacey’s been talking about.”
He looked to where she was pointing—a place in the low sky over Shanklin’s pond. “Quick, make a wish before it’s gone,” he encouraged.
The falling star did not vanish as expected. Instead, it was no longer falling at all. It seemed suspended from the handle of the Big Dipper, larger and brighter than all the stars in that part of the sky. Ben decided it had to be Venus.
“I don’t think Venus is ever in that part of the sky.”
“Then it’s probably Jupiter or Mercury. It’s got to be a planet.”
“Planets don’t move like that, Ben.”
“Then it’s a helicopter or a small aircraft coming this way.”
“There’s no sound,” declared Jenna. After regarding the sky again, “And why is the Big Dipper upside down? I don’t recall seeing it upside down before. And how many stars are in the handle? Do you remember?”
“There’s an extra star, one that shouldn’t be there,” declared Ben.
But the extra star was not a star at all. It was not a meteor from the Orionid Meteor shower. Its movement across the expanse of black sky obliterated the icy sparkle of starlight, eclipsed constellations, as they watched. Both knew this was something very unusual, and it was coming closer—until it became an improbable shape.
A chunk of night vanished above their heads. A huge piece of Indiana sky, which had been there seconds before, was now gone, and in its place was something extraordinary, an object much out of place in this unfamiliar sky. It’s shape was triangular. Black, slick beveled edges, with tiny lights that were barely discernible, it was a craft like neither had seen before—a UFO that had appeared without warning.
“I never believed in these things,” Jenna confessed. “How ridiculously naïve this presumption that anything and everything in the sky has an explanation.”
Ben was mesmerized by what was hovering above Shanklin’s pond, so bewildered by it that it took almost a minute before he could even speak. “Come on, Jenna.”
“What?”
“Under the bridge, we have to get out of sight.” Grabbing her hand, he immediately began pulling Jenna toward a narrow pathway that led down a steep incline.
“Ben!”
“We have to hurry.”
“If it’s not one of ours, hiding won’t make any difference,” she protested. “If they want us, there’s no place to hide, no place to run.” She was breathing hard as she spoke. “Slow down before we both end up in the water.”
“What would they want with us?” he questioned. “Why is it in the sky above Newburgh, Indiana?”
The rocky terrain under the bridge was hard to negotiate in the dark. Only a few feet from the water, Ben stumbled, almost taking Jenna down with him. The sound of water rushing over rocks was louder than either expected, and both knew the stream was at least three, maybe four feet deep. As their eyes grew more accustomed to darkness, they found themselves standing nervously on a large flat outcrop of limestone that ran six feet in any direction.
Much to Ben’s surprise, Jenna turned on the light on her mobile phone and began shining it into the cracks and crevices in the stone foundation. Her intention was to make a cursory inspection of their surroundings.
“Jenna,” he grunted in disbelief.
“I want to see where I am. For all I know there are creepy crawlers under here.”
“I’d rather deal with creepy crawlers than that thing up there,” Ben declared.
“Okay,” she muttered, turning off the light.
Suddenly, there was a loud cracking, breaking noise—as if the entire sky had been ripped apart. Peeking around the edge of a stone support column, they could make out a narrow split in the sky—a black seam unzipped, leaving the ruptured sky devoid of starlight. In the space where stars should have sparkled, was muted pink light the color of cherry blossoms. With green light less diffuse in the center of this vertical fissure, it was difficult to look too long without squinting.
Ben knew the same thing had happened that night in the library—just before Anna disappeared. “It’s an opening that won’t be there much longer,” he said with confidence.
Twenty seconds passed before she whispered, “Look.”
Instead of disappearing, the UFO dropped even lower in the sky, and above it another appeared, and then a third—each identical in appearance to the first, each with several small white lights, that might have been mistaken for stars in the Aquarius or Pegasus constellations. Several bright lights against the northeastern horizon, and not one of them a star. Abrupt angular movements yet precise and controlled, until the three UFOs formed a triangle above Shanklin’s pond. Still no sound in this night of nights. Tapered black edges darker than the night, outlined in lights that were small splinters of ice, tiny sparkles like the shine of distant stars, these UFOs had an inexorable but unknown purpose.
“This is so impossible.” As Jenna spoke, she managed a slight smile.
Still trying to rationalize what they were watching, Ben replied, “Maybe they’re helicopters from Grissom.”
“Helicopters make noise, Ben.” Only inches from his face, she looked directly into his eyes. “They aren’t helicopters.”
A twisting funnel of white light shattered the tranquility of the woods and lasted nearly 30 seconds before vanishing. The unzipped cleft, with the green light inside, began to zip shut. In less than five seconds, the three UFOs were gone. A familiar night sky returned with its immense expanse of sparkling constellations. They had not disappeared into the alien space, as Ben and Jenna expected. Instead, it was like each UFO was hooked to a long zip-line, and the end of that zip-line connected to a place on the northeastern horizon, which was the direction of Saint Meinrad, Indiana.
Still under the bridge, and still perplexed by what had transpired, Ben took Jenna in his arms and kissed her passionately. Holding her face gently in both hands, he saw her trepidation and wanted to kiss it away, but instantly realized that fear was not so easily kissed away. “I wanted to do that before.”
“Before what?” she grinned.
“Before the sky exploded,” he said calmly.
Her smile was wide and spontaneous. “So, do it again then.”
And he did. Afterwards, they climbed the grassy bank to the bridge, where Anna Atwood had once stood in cold autumn rain.
The early morning air was damp. As they walked beneath a sky on fire, in the direction of Atwood House, mist settled on the grass. The moist misty air grew colder, heavier, until the sudden threat of rain began to dim the stars. Darker clouds were already approaching. Soon, they would settle in the sky above Atwood House.
“Looks like more rain,” she remarked.
They walked a little faster under this darkening sky, thinking more about UFOs than the coming rain. Each was brought clo
ser to the other by the strange events of this remarkable night.
Chapter 24
As Smith came into the office, Walking Einstein, dressed in a white shirt and tie, sat at a large oak desk working complex computations on his new computer. Looking up, Charlie Chase was surprised to find the man standing in front of him, a newspaper tucked under his left arm. Smith had been serious when he told Charlie that results were not only expected but demanded.
“Did you see this?” asked Smith, holding out the newspaper so Charlie could read the headline.
“I haven’t read a newspaper in years. Anything I need to know is right here in front of me, but yes, I’ve seen it.”
“And what do you think?”
“They’re here.”
“Don’t tell me what we already know, Dr. Chase. Overpaid thinkers on government payrolls are already stretching appropriations and internal budgets. I’ve told you that I want fresh thinking.”
Tapping the monitor screen, Chase replied rather casually, “There’s a high concentration of sightings near the 37th and 38th parallels. The question is why so many verifiable accounts at these particular latitudes?”
“I suppose you have an answer?”
“Ley lines,” offered Chase.
“Ley lines . . . ley lines,” Smith repeated.
“There’s more. Take these recent Indiana sightings in Newburgh and Saint Meinrad, especially what happened last night at the Abbey.”
“Yes . . . we’re aware of these. What about them?”
“They also occurred on or near these latitudes.”
After a long pause, during which he regarded Walking Einstein carefully, the man known only as Smith said rather sharply, “I don’t believe in coincidence, sir.”
“It is definitely not coincidence.”
“You want me to believe there is a connection between ley lines and these particular latitudes?”
“It’s a connection easily made.”
“Don’t hold back on us,” Smith ordered. “If you know something, let’s have it.”
“Another large rock has recently been uncovered at the bottom of a pond in Newburgh. When a straight line is drawn from there to the site at the Archabbey at Saint Meinrad, both sites fall near the 37th parallel corridor.”
“Go on,” Smith prompted.
“It’s right there in your hand. There were recent sightings in both places.”
Smith set the paper on the corner of the desk before speaking again. “Those were nothing more than Sikorsky’s from Grissom, on maneuvers in that area, and easily mistaken for UFOs. It’s happened several times before.”
“If you want straight shooting from me, Mr. Smith, then I should get the same courtesy from you.”
“National security is not your concern.”
“We both know they’re here.”
Smith went silent, and Walking Einstein thought the conversation was over. One of the fluorescent lights flickered overhead, and the hum from the transformer was increasingly audible. Both men seemed noticeably uncomfortable with each other. Smith was not the kind of man who was ever too far from a military uniform, and Charlie Chase was sure that that he would do whatever was necessary to protect all information pertinent to national security.
“I’ll have to get maintenance to do something about that damn light.” Charlie pointed to the defective fluorescent light.
Smith looked up at it. Then he sat down in a chair near Walking Einstein’s desk, looked at the man curiously before speaking again, “Tell me how in the hell you got such a pretentious name?”
“Colleagues. It was meant to be a sarcastic condemnation of me personally. I didn’t think like those pretentious bastards, would not bend, and they didn’t like it. So, they branded me an imposter who too often turned his back on progressive thinking.”
Smith smiled as he spoke, “I’m around these people every single day, and believe it or not, I listen carefully to their research. Rarely anything new, nothing but the kind of rhetoric academics use when they apply for government grants. They have ways of making their hypotheses sound compelling, even the ridiculous ones.”
“I’m genuinely sorry for you, Smith,” returned Charlie.
“Let’s get back to these time slips.”
“They are shifts in the fabric of time, cracks and fissures—what you refer to as portals,” stated Chase frankly.
“There has to be a way to identify or predict with some accuracy their locations,” suggested Smith with a directness that caused Chase to immediately think the man expected him to provide that answer.
“This is where it gets complicated.”
Smith leaned back in the wooden chair across from Walking Einstein. “We’re not unfamiliar with current theories.”
“I’m sure you’re not, and again, that’s what confuses me. What I know, you either know or have already considered.”
Pushing on with questions he thought Chase could answer, the man in the dark blue pinstripe suit cleared his throat and said, “Tell me more about these time-shifts. How do they happen? Can they be initiated?”
“I think so.”
“That’s it? You think so?” Smith was pushing hard, hoping for a glimmer of light in a world where gray eclipsed even the smallest anticipation.
“There’s more.”
“Let’s have it then,” Smith demanded. “These mainstream thinkers can’t think beyond their data. I don’t want more phony conjectures. I want fresh thinking, possibilities beyond the same damn data that lead to more dead ends.”
“There is no key, if that’s what you’re thinking.”
“Look, Charlie, I know you got ideas, maybe definitive ideas, maybe nothing more than speculations. But I need something to hang a hat on, something that explains how these things come and go so damn easily.”
“You’re keeping me too much in the dark, Smith. If I knew a little more about this project you’re working on, maybe then I could offer something more specific . . . more substantial.”
“Project Firefly,” returned Smith abruptly.
“Well, that’s a start,” said Chase. “And what exactly did the Air Force retrieve in 1947 Newburgh, Indiana?”
“Much of that remains classified, Dr. Chase,” Smith confessed.
“I’ve seen what’s been released. The declassified material is so heavily redacted that’s it’s virtually meaningless.”
“You’re talking about an event that occurred years before my time.”
“But not an event unfamiliar to you,” Chase implied.
“That was then, and this is now, as they say.” Smith looked closely at Chase before adding. “What happened there in 1947 has been thoroughly documented.”
“I don’t buy the meteor story, Smith.”
“We’re not dealing with 1947, Charlie,” shot Smith angrily.
“I need a starting point,” Chase stated calmly.
“And you think 1947 Newburgh is the place to begin?”
“Whatever information was secured from the Newburgh event has some huge holes in it, or I wouldn’t be needed,” Charlie declared. “Not unless you’re going in another direction—considering other objectives.” Charlie looked at Smith and waited for an answer. “Which is it?”
“It’s both,” admitted Smith.
“Let me see if I can fill in some of the blanks for you.” Charlie saw Smith’s expression change from irritation to curiosity. “Let’s suppose magnetic energy is the fundamental component of Project Firefly and that what happened in Newburgh, Indiana and also in Roswell, New Mexico in 1947 provided the military with, well let’s say, a few new tools in their toolbox, and that what was discovered was much more than rudimentary information.” He kept his eyes on Smith as he continued to speak with subtleties and innuendos he knew Smith would understand. “The hammer was no longer th
e tool of choice. Moving forward, the laws of physics weren’t working. Bring in the cavalry, the cookie-cutters, the talking heads to figure out how the visitors had altered the laws of physics. Both science and national security had been compromised.”
Smith leaned forward on his elbows, regarded Chase with eyes as serious as any Charlie had seen. “What if I told you that your narrative had omitted one essential component?”
“I’d say you got the abridged version.”
“You’re saying you know what that component is?”
“I’m saying you’re dancing with the devil.”
“What the hell does that mean?” asked Smith, whose patience with Chase was beginning to wear thin.
“You’re being manipulated by a bunch of sheep . . . thieves of taxpayer dollars who are contracted to the sins of conformity.
“My God but you have a high opinion of yourself,” proclaimed Smith.
“Not so much as a low opinion of those working in your echo chambers.”
Smith got up and went over to the only window in the office, which looked out on a faculty parking lot. “Which one of those do you drive?”
“None of them,” revealed Chase. “I don’t live far from campus, so I walk when the weather’s nice.”
“Do you even own a car?”
“An old Ford Explorer.”
“I was beginning to think we weren’t paying you enough,” smiled Smith.
Dismissing Smith’s remark and before speaking again, Charlie came over to where Smith was standing. “Thermal currents,” said Chase without looking at Smith.
“What about them?”
“I’m convinced certain weather formations are capable of creating vortexes or vortices,” revealed Chase.
“Yes, we know that. They are frequently observed.”
“Certain types of weather anomalies can create vortexes in time and space, but too often they occur without warning.” Chase had his arms folded as he looked at cars in the parking lot. “A lot of expensive metal out there, some of these people must be knocking down huge bucks.”
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