Sam wasn't certain where Maddie would run, but when Sam resumed her own sprint to the shadows, she did so with a smile on her face. Maddie certainly could take care of herself.
* * *
"Where's Maddie?" Shells asked when Sam finally caught up to the rest of the group. They had made it to their destination, and Sam had to agree with Michael's choice; the view was magnificent.
"Someone grabbed her," Sam began, and Shells looked like she was ready to rip that someone's arms off. "I'm just about certain she got away, but I'm also pretty sure she won't be joining us. I think she went the other way to lead any pursuers in the wrong direction. Maybe we'll get lucky and she'll find her way back, but I wouldn't count on it."
"Are you sure she got away?" Shells asked.
"As sure as I can be without going after her. It sounded like she knocked the wind out of the guy, and then she took off. I was going to stay and help her, but she insisted I go. It was a tough call, but I ended up doing as she said."
Shells didn't look quite satisfied with that answer, and Sam did feel a little guilty, but there wasn't much she could do about it at that point. Instead she focused on seeing what was going on in the valley below. The light in the lake had grown brighter, and now it seemed less like the light was coming from below the water, and instead seemed to be coming from the air above the lake. In fact, the entire valley seemed to be charged, and the air nearly sang as it trembled with energy.
Looking up, Sam noticed that the moon appeared backlit and now looked like a full moon when it had clearly only been a partial moon hours before. When she looked closely, it seemed as if the moon was on fire, and blue and orange flames licked its circular edges. The craters stood out in sharper relief than she had ever seen them before and she became entranced by its ancient beauty. It had always been there, yet never before had she noticed it so keenly, and it was as if she looked upon it for the first time.
"I told them it would come!" Michael said with an air of righteous victory.
"OK, Mikey. This shit is starting to freak me out. Straight up. What the hell is going on here?"
Michael turned to her with the widest smile they had seen on his face yet. "At three-thirteen AM there will be a planetary alignment that hasn't occurred in over two-thousand years. When this occurs, gravity will be affected, and when gravity is affected, time is affected. Do you understand?"
"No," Shells said, and Sam thought it might be the most honest word Shells had ever uttered. Sam also had to admit that she didn't understand either.
"There is only one thing that affects the flow of time, and that is gravity. Did you know that time moves more quickly on Earth than it does in space?"
"Uh, no," Shells said.
"Well it does. In fact, satellites that circle the Earth have to make minute adjustments to their clocks in order to account for the time differential."
"You're freaking me out, dude."
"OK," Michael said. "I'll try to get to the point. Tonight, for a very brief time, it will be possible to travel between worlds."
"Say what?"
"Let me see if I can explain this," Michael continued. "So you know how in quantum physics it is possible for something to be in two places at the same time?"
"That's some crazy ass psycho babble you're spouting there, Mikey."
"Where did you people go to school?" he asked, but then he let it drop. "OK, did any of you ever read A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle?"
"I read it when I was a kid," Sam said, and Greg said he had as well.
Shells looked at both of them as if they were some kind of freaks. "I've never even heard of that shit."
"Just bear with me," Michael said. "in that book she explains that if you hold a long piece of string between your hands, and if you had an ant on one of your hands, it would take many steps for the ant to walk across the string and reach the other side, right?"
Sam and Greg nodded. Shells looked as if she would say something, but Michael didn't give her the chance to speak. "But if you brought your hands together, the string would wrinkle and the ant could walk to the other end of the string with only a couple steps, right?"
"Yeah. I remember that," Sam said.
"Good," Michael said. "That's kind of what's going to happen tonight. There is going to be a wrinkle in space-time. Our world and another are going to be right next to each other, and at the same time they are going to be light years apart. Make sense?"
"Not even close," Shells said, but Sam and Greg both nodded. "You're all friggen' nuts."
"Perhaps," Michael said, undeterred. "But we shall see. The show is about to begin."
Shells turned over her smartphone and Sam saw the time; three-twelve. A chill ran down her spine.
"I don't think you'll need night vision for any of this, and it's probably better to leave it off. The military types will almost surely see it. I wanted it mostly for getting up here, but there were no clouds. Are you ready to record?"
Sam, Shells and Greg all pulled cameras from the bag and started recording. While trying to get a good focus on the illuminated water, Sam zoomed out and ran her camera up the opposite side of the valley. Through her viewfinder she saw a glistening figure standing on an outcropping of rock that stood over where the light struck the water. Even from a distance she recognized the man from Arrowheads, only now he wore nothing but a loincloth and a subdued headdress. His accouterments were far less colorful than the way Native American ceremonial dress was often portrayed, and it achieved a completely different effect; it made him look a part of his environment and exuded respect for the natural world. Sam wondered how she could get so much information from simple garb; but still the thoughts came to her easily, as if she, too, were in tune with her surroundings.
"Why was I drawn here?" Sam asked Michael suddenly, and he was clearly not prepared for the question.
"I have some ideas, but I doubt you will like them. Perhaps it would be better if you searched inside yourself for answers."
"I've looked inside and all I find are more questions. Tell me."
"As you wish," Michael said. "You heard me say that this type of thing hasn't happened in thousands of years, and that means that it has happened before. If you look in our history, you will find times when people claimed strange and magical things occurred as part of their everyday lives. Why do you think that is?" he didn't wait for her to answer. "I think it because beings traveled between worlds, and those beings interacted with our ancestors; perhaps they even laid with our ancestors." His words brought a shocked look from all those around him.
It looked as if he would continue, but then the helicopters came. Scouring the coastline, they used searchlights to illuminate anything that seemed out of place. The first thing they found was the man from Arrowheads, and the spotlights shone on his glistening body that looked as if it had been anointed with oils.
"Stay where you are," came an amplified voice from within one of the helicopters. "You are not in any trouble, but you are in danger. Stay there and we will come get you."
At that same moment, the air around Sam began to sing and thrum with energy, and now that energy seemed to be concentrated until it had physical form. Electric lights, like the one she saw jump from the kudzu began to swirl through the air like a snow of plasma. Light reached from tree limbs, leaves, pinecones, and just about anything that came to a point. Sam felt her hair standing up, and Shells looked as if she had been attacked by static cling. It was obvious that she didn't need any gel to make her hair look spiky at that moment.
"Holy crap," Shells sputtered. "Something really is happening. Holy friggen' crap! Look at that. Oh, shit! Look at that!"
Even as the helicopters hovered near the shoreline, the light above the water began to form a conical structure that reached into the night sky, all the way to the moon and beyond.
"I knew it!" Michael shouted with exultation. "This is the only place in the world that anyone can see this tonight. There is a magnetic field that
traps the light, and time. Only those within a five-mile radius will even know something out of the ordinary is occurring. You are seeing something that very few people have ever seen, and something that I dare say no one alive has ever witnessed. You are recording this, right?"
Jerked back to reality, Sam checked her viewfinder and panned across the scene as it unfolded. When she reached the area where the light touched the surface of the lake, she gasped. The water there had begun to rotate. As she watched it grew faster and faster until a great rolling maelstrom formed, and the funnel roared a primal yet alluring call.
"That is what they were trying to hide when they built this lake!" Michael cried out. "There, at the bottom of the lake, is an ancient Native American shrine. They knew this was a holy place."
As if in response to his words, or perhaps because of the uniformed men that approached his position, the man from Arrowheads jumped. Sam cried out in shock and horror, but the man never hit the water. It looked as if the twisting vortex of light sucked him in, and he became transparent before diffusing into nothingness. Within seconds he was gone. Tears came to Sam's eyes.
Michael, on the other hand, shouted in joyful exultation, "Go! Be free! Go home to your ancestors!"
A moment later the valley was filled with a mighty roar. The swirling vortex grew even more distinct, and a magical song vibrated and thrummed, but it was accompanied by a different kind of music; the music of V8 engines and the theme to Miami Vice.
"Oh my God!" Sam cried out. She didn't know if she should be terrified or excited. Roaring across the lake was Greg's Uncle's boat. Helicopters roared overhead, shining their lights on Maddie who was at the helm. With her were others that Sam recognized; the Woods Woman Psychic was there, and the strawberry blonde, and other psychics who had gathered. All of them rode with their hands held in the air as if in triumph, and Sam decided to celebrate with them, even if she was filled with terror as they approached the maelstrom at full speed. The mighty cigarette boat roared as it entered the swirling waters and began to be sucked into the central vortex of open air that now reached all the way to the floor of the ancient river valley. There was no water there to catch them. There would be nothing there to break their fall. It was too late, and Sam's screams would have no impact on the outcome.
Twice the boat rotated around the vortex before it plunged into the central vacuum. Then, just as it appeared it would crash to the lake floor, it grew transparent and diffuse, and then in a roar of V8 fury and the roll of drums, it was gone.
Sam wept tears of joy and loss. There was an ache in her chest that made her want to follow Maddie and the others, and a feeling of loss, since she knew she would not. She felt as if she were being torn between two worlds. A quick glance at Greg showed him frozen in place, his expression one of complete shock, and Shells didn't look much better. Sam was about to reach out to them when Shells exclaimed, "What the hell is that?"
Following her gaze and pointing finger, it didn't take Sam long to locate what she was talking about.
"I knew it!" Michael shouted. "I just knew it!"
"Spit it out, Mikey, or I'm going to beat it out of you," Shells said.
"Those," Michael said, his voice thick with emotion and excitement, "are the Brown Mountain lights! I just knew it!"
Like spheres of plasma, the lights danced through the foliage, one minute in one location, and the next instant jumping to a nearby area. Looking much like a psychedelic light show, Sam had difficulty keeping them in frame, and she could only hope that the others were faring better.
"They're going home!" Michael shouted triumphantly as the lights entered the water, casting rays of light through the turbulent waters of the lake. "Go baby go!"
Then, with unnatural speed, the lights shot through the water and into the vortex, and then they were gone.
Thus far, the military presence had been relatively passive, but that all changed when it looked as if something was coming through the vortex—from the other side. In that instant, the world erupted. Tracer fire split the night and ripped into the vortex only to disappear, and Sam shouted out in dismay, worried the fire would erupt on the other end of the portal and hit Maddie and the others. She had no way of knowing what was occurring on the other side, and the unknown gnawed at her. Dark shapes erupted from the vortex and shot through the water with incredible speed. The military opened fire with the largest weapons Sam had ever witnessed. The echoes of massive gunfire echoed through the valley like primordial thunder, but it didn't seem to have any effect. The sound of men giving orders filled the air during a brief lull in the firing, and then the largest shape yet erupted from the vortex. This one did not shoot through the water and disappear into the depths as the others had, though. Instead it sprung into the air, one stroke of its massive wings displacing enough air to send the helicopters spinning out of control. One was able to right itself fairly quickly; another was sent spinning violently and was forced to make a clumsy and unexpected landing, though it appeared no one was seriously injured.
Then, for the first time, Sam felt that she and the others were in serious danger, since the giant flying beast was coming directly for them. Tracer fire followed its every move, and Sam could hear the unsettling sound of rounds striking the trees and rocks below them. The beast blotted out the moon and stars as it moved overhead. Whether out of rage, victory, or in pain Sam didn't know, but the beast erupted in a roar that froze her in primal fear. What had just entered her world, she wondered, as the world began to wobble and shift even as the massive gunfire moved away from them. On trembling knees, Sam watched as the vortex wobbled, losing its distinct form. Looking up, she saw that the moon had shed its crown and was now only partially engulfed in fire. Within minutes it was over, and the world returned to normal, save the smell of expended shells and the sounds of men shouting. Boats roared over the surface of the lake, and searchlights filled the forests around Lake Lure.
"I think it might be time to go," Michael said, and no one argued with him. "Let's see if we can get back to the carriage house without being seen."
Moving as silently as they could, the group stayed to the shadows. Only Greg's voice broke the stillness, and it seemed he spoke only to himself, unaware that the words had actually left his lips, "What am I going to tell my Uncle?"
"It was a pleasure boat, at least," Sam whispered. "It's not like you burned his house down."
Greg didn't make any response.
"Just tell him the 1980's called, and they wanted their boat back," Shells said. Greg cast her a scathing look.
Sam shook her head, and he caught her eye. "You have to admit," she said. "That's going to be one hell of an insurance claim."
"Now would be a good time to stuff a sock in it," Michael said as they neared the edge of the tree line. There was not much in the way of cover between them and the carriage house, and they were just going to have to make a run for it. Motioning with his head, Michael led them into the semi-darkness with only the moonlight casting its eerie glow over the landscape. No cars moved along highway 64, and only the shouts of the military surrounding the lake gave evidence that anyone else was about. Nothing barred their path as they made their way across the parking lot, and Sam let out a sigh of relief when they finally entered the carriage house. Her relief was short-lived, however. As soon as the door closed behind them, the lights came on, and a pair of armed men stood waiting for them.
"You didn't really think we were going to let you show the world that footage, did you?" asked a man that Sam recognized from earlier that day; he was the older man that had been stationed within the Inn. "We may have let you see what occurred, but we can't allow that footage to go any further. Sorry. Hand over the cameras."
With a sigh of resignation, Sam put her camera and the night vision goggles on the bench at the back of the carriage house.
"Yours, too," the man said to Shells, who had not yet relinquished her camera. Greg laid his on the bench, and eventually Shells did as well, but not b
efore giving both men the finger. "No one would have believed you anyway. Even with the footage, people would just have claimed it was a fake. If you tell anyone about our involvement, we will deny it, and records of your past mental health issues might just get leaked to the media."
"What mental health issues," Shells asked, incredulous. The man just shrugged. "You're complete assholes!" Again, the man just shrugged. "Are we free to go now?"
"Not yet," the man said. "Forgive me for not trusting you, but we just need to do a quick search of your persons to make sure you aren't trying to hide any tapes."
The search was relatively quick and went without much trouble until they got to Shells.
"If you try to feel me up, I'm going to kick you in the nuts. Got it?"
The older man ignored her and looked triumphant when he pulled a miniDV tape from one of the pockets in her cargo shorts.
"Nice try," he said. "You are now free to go. If you are wise, you will keep your mouths shut about all of this. If not, then I may be paying you a visit. At the very least, your pasts will become a great deal more colorful than they already are. Have I made myself perfectly clear?"
"Oh, yeah," Shells said, glaring at him.
After taking all of the tapes from the recorders, the man and his subordinate left the carriage house.
"I suppose there is no need to sneak around now," Michael said, and he led them back to the main doors of the Inn. Once inside, he bid them a good night and walked away while mumbling something under his breath about notes and colleagues. Shells, Sam and Greg made their way back up the steps to Sam's room.
"What do you think happened to Maddie and the others?" Shells asked, a hitch in her voice.
"I'm betting they are having one hell of an adventure," Sam said. "They weren't drawn here for nothing. Something wonderful must have been waiting for them on the other side."
"If nothing else," Greg said, a bit forlorn, "They've got one hell of a nice boat to cruise around in."
Lure Page 21
