Spider Lines

by Terry Trafton

  But Lacey wasn’t so sure Ben would show up later as Liz suggested. She had her own ideas about what had happened. “What if he went through one of those invisible boundaries, a gateway, or whatever it was we experienced in the dining room? I’ll say it again. Strange things happen in that house.”

  “Ben knows what he’s doing, Lacey,” Jenna assured her.

  Shaking her head, Lacey said, “That woman seems to have a thing for him.”

  “Lacey told me about the incident in the dining room,” Matt revealed. “That house really is a mystery.”

  “We start by believing everything will be fine,” suggested Liz, who was curious about the dining room incident. “Maybe we can talk about what happened in the dining room later.”

  Jenna looked at Liz, as if to get her approval before speaking again. “Dr. Raymond had a premonition in the great room.”

  “Really,” replied Lacey excitedly.

  “Why don’t you tell them, Liz?” prompted Jenna.

  “As soon as people hear the word premonition, they start shaking their heads. Nevertheless, I can assure you that premonitions can certainly be real.” She looked at each before speaking again. “I don’t know his name, and I only met him once, but he knows about these strange phenomena, and I’m sure it’s only a matter of time before he shows up here.”

  “A couple nights ago a man at the Knob Hill Tavern was asking questions about the 1947 military recovery,” revealed Matt. “Keith Own was there and thought it a little peculiar that a man who was just passing through town would ask so many questions.”

  “You were there?” Lacey wanted to know.

  “Dad ran into Keith Owen in town Friday, said the man looked kind of bookish, one of those eccentric types who knows things. Said his name was Chase—Charlie Chase,” Matt announced.

  They looked at Liz for her response. But Liz Raymond was looking off in the distance at someone standing near the woods. “I think he found us.” She pointed to a man coming closer with each step.

  Chapter 47

  He recognized Liz immediately. “I’m sure we’ve met before.”

  “Saint Meinrad Archabbey.”

  “That’s right,” he nodded.

  She looked closely at him as did the others, each wanting to know more about this man now standing among them, looking around curiously. “I never got your name, sir,” coaxed Dr. Raymond politely.

  “Well, we didn’t have much time together, did we? If I remember correctly, you were shocked by what I told you.”

  “You’ll have to admit it was all kind of sudden. I didn’t really expect a stone to have a pulse.”

  He laughed at that, and reached out to shake her hand, “Charlie Chase . . . Dr. Charlie Chase.”

  “Liz Raymond,” returned Liz warmly, surprised to learn Chase was not the itinerant she first suspected.

  “Yes, I know who you are, Dr. Raymond. Carl Hewitt told me after you left that day.”

  Liz introduced the others and when Charlie and Matt went over to look at the limestone slab, Jenna pulled Liz aside and whispered, “Is he the one?”

  “He’s the one,” she nodded.

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes, Jenna, I’m quite sure.”

  The fact that Liz had met Chase at Saint Meinrad seemed good enough for the others. Something about the man made him a bit eccentric, but also engagingly provocative. His sandy-blond hair, parted on one side, was long in the back and touched the collar of his jacket. He had sparkling blue eyes so pale that they looked ethereal. Dressed in jeans, a blue nylon jacket, and shiny wingtips, Chase had a canvas bag over his right shoulder, and Liz knew from the first time they met that just about anything he needed was in that bag.

  “Got any ideas?” Matt asked him directly.

  “Yes,” responded Chase, while running his fingers over what Matt had decided were numbers so heavily weathered that they could no longer be discerned. “What do your scans show?”

  “A large void, and there could be steps.”

  With the rest of them looking on, Charlie moved from one corner to the next, and with a hand trowel, which he took from his canvas bag, they saw him dig until the bottom of the slab was exposed. “If you dig a bit more along the edges, and loosen the stone from the ground, I don’t think you’ll need the Bobcat.”

  Matt dug the entire perimeter deeper. When he finished, he looked for Charlie, who was digging the perimeter of the other slab. “Okay, got it,” Matt yelled.

  Chase was the kind of man who kept his thoughts almost exclusively to himself—unless pushed to reveal them. Even then, he said no more than was necessary. These people were different. They had no obvious ulterior motives, and not one, except possibly Dr. Liz Raymond, knew what had happened here. There was much, much more Chase could reveal, but first things first.

  Returning to where the others stood, Dr. Chase acknowledged, “I’ve seen marks like these before. They’re pivot marks.”

  With Chase once more on his hands and knees, the thin man with the polished wingtip shoes, the man capable of putting it all together, carefully examined the marks on the slab, as if he wanted to be sure before he did anything. Matt also knelt. Chase glanced at him, and what he did next surprised all of them. He tapped the end of the trowel against the south end of the stone. Nothing. Getting up, he went to the opposite end and tapped with the trowel a second time.

  Amazingly, the stone began to rise at one end until it was vertical, leaving open spaces on both ends. With some creaking, it rotated on an iron axis that was at the center of the stone. Walking Einstein took a flashlight from his bag, but instead of shining it into the hole as the rest of them expected, he removed the batteries and placed the positive ends against the stone, which immediately began to glow in an almost imperceptible soft white light, which disappeared when he removed the batteries. The mechanism that enabled the large stone to be raised was a series of small vertical wheels connected to a pushrod that, when freed, allowed the stone to rotate on a heavy metal rod approximately five feet long, which was a foot or more longer than the width of the limestone slab.

  “This is absolutely unbelievable,” Jenna said excitedly.

  “What is it?” Lacey wanted to know.

  Liz, standing beside Walking Einstein, knew what they had uncovered. Before speaking, she looked at Chase who nodded as though he knew what she was thinking. But instead of Liz speaking, it was Charlie who revealed her thoughts.

  “You’re right, Dr. Raymond. We saw something similar at the Abbey. And this has been carefully constructed to have the same purpose.”

  “What is it?” called Jenna from a few feet away.

  “A communication tower,” Liz replied.

  “The underside is not entirely limestone,” Walking Einstein informed them. “It has a thin layer embedded with grains of copper,” and here he looked at Matt, “much like those pieces you’ve been digging up. It’s a reactor capable of generating a power source.”

  “Sunlight will activate it?” asked Matt.

  “Only slightly. Think of a stove. A burner on low will produce only low heat. Sunlight only warms the surface. It takes another charge to make it function.”

  “And what’s that?” Jenna inquired.

  Charlie pointed into the hole, which the sun was beginning to illuminate. “The power source is down there.”

  The others pushed nearer to see for themselves what Chase referred to as the power source. They saw several rocks, nearly transparent in the noon sun, piled at the bottom of what was nothing more than a pit which looked like it had been dug by hand.

  “Rocks,” Lacey proclaimed.

  “Not just rocks,” Charlie acknowledged. “Those are quartz crystals. If you look closely, you can see a protrusion of quartz, probably a large vein running in that direction.” Here he pointed to the other limestone slab.
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br />   Matt glanced over his shoulder toward the other stone slab before saying, “I guess the other one is the same thing as this?”

  Charlie nodded. “A quartz crystal was loaded into that depression.” In the overhead sunlight, the depression was obvious to everyone. “At night, the entire stone slab could be rotated, exposing the crystal to the sky.”

  “You seem to know a lot about this,” Lacey alleged.

  “I only want to solve this thing before the government shows up, so we can keep them off the hunt, so to speak.”

  “Pardon me for saying,” began Jenna, “but you could be the government.”

  He nodded. “I certainly could be, but I can assure you that I am no longer contracted in any way with any government program or project. The government has already got what it needed from me. What’s going on around here is a much larger event than any of us can fully comprehend, and that would include the government, or more specifically, the military.”

  It was Liz who came to Chase’s defense. “We need to listen—give him a chance to explain what happened here.”

  “I want to show you something,” announced Walking Einstein, reaching into his bag to withdraw a manila folder. “A couple of days ago I was in the woods there,” and he nodded toward the woods that concealed Shanklin’s pond, “when I found these near the creek.” He handed photographs of two coins to Dr. Raymond, who held them out for the others to see. “After cleaning the coins, I shot these photographs and had them enlarged,” Chase revealed. “I wanted to be sure that I was absolutely correct about them.”

  “You say you found these near the creek?” Liz asked.

  “That’s right.”

  “What is it, Liz?” Jenna asked, after catching Liz’s surprised expression.

  “Look at the date.”

  “I don’t understand—2150,” Jenna proclaimed. “It says, ‘One Hundred United States Dollars’. You can’t be serious.”

  “That’s what I thought,” returned Charlie, “but I guarantee that these are the real deal.” He pulled the two coins from his pocket and held them out on the palm of his hand. “Any jeweler could easily confirm them as gold coins.”

  “Oh, my God, Liz. Can this be possible?” Jenna looked hard at Chase before asking, “You’re absolutely sure about this?”

  He nodded, “They are authentic in every respect.”

  “Dr. Chase,” began Liz, “just what is your purpose, your interest in all this?”

  “What crashed here in 1901 was not an alien spaceship. All indications point to a craft from our own future. In 1947, that craft was not dug out of the ground by the military as I initially thought. I don’t think the government ever suspected a crash site.”

  “How could you possibly know this?” Jenna asked.

  “You do seem very sure,” admitted Liz.

  “It all fits. This was an attempted controlled landing that went wrong. There are still indications where the craft struck the ground—those rises across the field. After exhausting research, I’m convinced now that the military was searching for something else entirely. This is confirmed by later reconnaissance satellite technology, which never showed anything suspicious—nothing on the Newland or Atwood properties, and nothing in the town lake or Ohio River.”

  Liz listened carefully to Chase, thinking he presented a plausible scenario. What she suspected was that Walking Einstein knew much more than he offered now. “This is extremely profound, Dr. Chase,” she said.

  “I think way outside the parameters laid down by lazy, self-aggrandizing academics who never look holistically at anything. They begin with preconceived hypotheses that they spend careers trying to support. I do the research, and I don’t care where it takes me,” Charlie informed them.

  “There had to be a pilot—someone in control of the craft,” intimated Liz.

  “And maybe a crew, or passengers,” suggested Lacey.

  “Do you think it’s possible they survived?” Jenna asked.

  “There’s every reason to think they did,” Charlie assured them. “I can only tell you what I’ve decided based on 15 years of research.”

  “What happened to them?” inquired Jenna.

  “I have some ideas, but I don’t know for sure. I do think that those answers are still here—on this property.”

  Matt, descending the eight steps to the bottom, picked up one of the crystals and fit it into the depression. Looking up at Chase, who was watching him, he asked, “Is this how it’s done?”

  “Yes,” Charlie replied. “That’s precisely how it’s done.”

  “And then what?”

  But before Charlie could answer, the stone slab began to rotate. The mechanism clicked, and the slab went flat against the ground—with Matt Jennings trapped in the hole beneath it. The bottom side of the slab now faced toward the sky. The quartz Matt had fit into the space, cast a soft greenish glow that caused everyone except Charlie Chase to back away. Seconds passed before a thick bolt of green light shot high into a blue sky.

  Chapter 48

  He felt Anna’s hand slipping loose, heard her calling him from far away, calling his name with an urgency that frightened him. Calling, calling, until silence fell on all sides of him, heart-wrenching silence that left only echoes ringing in his head. Ben Manning had no idea where he was.

  A gallery of unfamiliar faces appeared, each with a gaping mouth, shouting out warnings that had come too late. The support beneath his feet was gone. Spinning madly, as if he’d been caught inside a swirling wind, sucked into a tenacious vortex, he tried to open his eyes in the vacillating mist that was everywhere. The swirling wind had hold of him. At the mercy of this alien wind, there was nothing to reach for, nothing to steady him, nothing to keep him from blowing into oblivion.

  He could not tell in which direction his body was moving. There was nothing to anchor him, nothing to stop the sensation of turning, then floating, then tumbling and spinning again. But he believed that when it finally stopped he would be upright on his feet with beautiful Anna Atwood beside him. It was the terrible silence that disturbed him, especially when he felt this spiraling wind was transporting him back in time. Maybe that was the way it happened, a sweep of wind dragging him away in dead silence, inside a vacuum of shadows and confusion. Why had Anna so quickly slipped away from him? He recalled how easily her fingers had slipped from his. Had she deliberately left him alone, or was she somewhere inside the mist reaching out, trying to find him?

  It had happened so quickly. Whether he’d gone with Anna willingly, he couldn’t say. What did it matter? Here he was shackled to this ungodly wind that deliberately transported him farther away from the world he knew. But what happened next was so frightening, so disturbing, that he was on the verge of losing consciousness.

  Eyes! Hundreds of eyes watching him. Vindictive eyes. Everywhere, the eyes of strangers, watching, staring, unblinking. Eyes without faces. Huge bulging eyes. Were these the eyes of angels, or the eyes of devils—evil, punishing eyes that saw every solitary sin? Eyes that saw into the dark places unhidden from God? It was not a time for nakedness in front of eyes that knew every dirty secret. But there he was, scrutinized by hundreds of cold intrusive eyes that watched him attempt again to steady himself in a greenish mist that was now beginning to evaporate. Finally, his hands rubbed against something with rough edges.

  Even with his feet touching what he was sure was a wooden floor, and still leaning to one side, Ben attempted to regain his balance. Knees wobbly, his thoughts hazy, leaving him slightly disoriented after what had happened, and still unsure where he was, he reached out to steady himself and touched what felt like bricks. In darkness this deep, he could not see anything. Holding his hand in front of his face, he could barely make out his fingers. This was what the grave was like, and for a few moments, that’s exactly where he thought he was—deep in his own grave.

 
With one hand trailing behind him, he walked ten feet one way, before coming to a corner. Fifteen steps to his left was another corner. If he was in a room, where was the door? Where were the windows—the furniture? Where were the lights? What was wrong with him? The light was in his pocket.

  He took out his mobile phone and pushed on the flashlight. Instantly, shadows relented enough to reveal a large empty room without windows, a room without doors, a room with a plaster ceiling, ten feet above his head. He was entombed inside four brick walls. What appeared to be the only doorway was bricked shut. Alone in a room without any visible way out was a daunting situation. And with the only light in the room coming from his cell phone, the situation was even more demoralizing.

  This was how it ended. God, what a way to go! He could be anywhere in time. When he looked at the time and date on his mobile phone, he was somewhat relieved. It was nearly noon. The date verified the next day after a long night of dancing with Anna. What if the date was wrong? What if the phone didn’t work? He knew he had one chance, and only one chance.

  His hands and fingers trembled as he held the phone. No signal. Even moving to different places in the room, there was still no signal. He’d have to endure the dark, save the battery. Knowing his chance to survive was slight, he sat down and leaned against the bricked doorway. Without tools, he could not break through the bricks. He remembered seeing karate people break bricks with their bare hands. Maybe he could kick the bricks loose. Then again, if he broke his foot or leg, he’d be worse off than he was now.

  The air was thin and rancid, stale air that had been there since the room was walled shut. Shining his flashlight up to the ceiling, he did see a pipe, which probably vented outside. At least he wouldn’t suffocate. Then the thought occurred to him that hypoxia might be the quickest way out. Ben had never found himself in a life-and-death situation, so remaining as calm as possible was essential. It was too soon for panic.