King of the Dark Mountain

by Galili Black

  Chapter Six

  The hike came to a sudden end in front of a sheer overhanging cliff. Ian motioned for them to stop. He spoke into a microphone attached to his backpack and an amazing thing happened, a door apparently made of solid rock opened in front of them. It was just wide enough and tall enough for them to slip through. It shut behind them with a kind of whooshing sound. It had not been visible in the slightest when they had come upon it from an area of the trail that was less steep. It was set off a dozen yards from the trail, but Ellie hadn’t even noticed that they had left the path. She had been looking in front of her, still holding on to Ted.

  The latter was making notes into his cell phone recorder about some ideas he had for his next novel. The most important thing to do is get it down as soon as the thought crosses your mind; he had often told her and his other undergraduate students. Back then, he used a notepad but he found the audio file worked better when he was on the go. Ellie didn’t pay any attention to what he was saying; she was too tired and hungry to care. She was just about ready to ask for a break so she could look for food in her backpack when the cliff came in to view.

  Once inside the cliff, the space was almost as narrow as the door for about twenty feet or so. It reminded her of pictures she had seen of the corridors connecting chambers in the great pyramid at Giza. Of course she might be making the association simply due to the information Ian had shared about the influence of the pyramid builders in creating the entire project. Just as she was making that association, the corridor they were in opened up suddenly into a larger space. It wasn’t the grand gallery, but it was less claustrophobic than the corridor at least. Ian made them pause once again while he spoke into the microphone.

  A door to the left opened and two women appeared. They nodded to everyone. “Please follow me,” one of them said. They all followed, without speaking

  They entered an elevator which took them at least six stories down. Ellie wondered why they hadn’t just created a door lower down on the mountain and saved the necessity of the long climb. Finally the elevator stopped, and they stepped out into a room the size of a small auditorium. It had a domed ceiling that glowed with what looked like natural light, but since they were inside the mountain it had to be artificial. In the center of the room there was a clear paneled area the size of a small room. Its walls did not reach as far as the ceiling so that it gave the appearance of a giant square drinking glass. Inside Ellie noticed a beautiful potted plant and a raised platform covered with some white brocaded material. It looked inviting.

  “That’s where we actually conduct the experiments,” Ted explained. He gave her a smile made a little goofy by the slight cross-eyed quality of his close set eyes. “Let’s go find the cafeteria; I know you must be ravenous. I certainly am.” She followed him across the open space to an area opposite the entrance. Looking up reminded her of the skylight in Ted’s house, the light wasn’t as blinding as sunlight but it was impossible to see anything in it. Still, she had the distinct impression of a presence or presences in it; this caused a shiver and she hurried her pace to keep up with Ted.

  *

  Hez bolted out of the king sized motel bed, his heart pounding. He switched on the bedside light and grabbed his cell phone. It was 4:00 a.m. The stabs of adrenalin in his muscles made him feel a little queasy. He went to the bathroom and gulped down some water from the faucet. The dream came back to him in pieces. Ellie’s terrified face pressed against a window in some old house. It looked like an abandoned farm house they sometimes played in as kids, on the farm Fred Phelps had bought a few years back. He’d eventually demolished the old house, but back in the day they had sometimes gone there and pretended it was haunted.

  He made up ghost stories about what had happened in it. After a while, Ellie refused to go there anymore. She claimed to have seen the ghosts. He didn’t believe her because he’d made up the whole thing. She still insisted that she’d seen something in the house. She threatened to tell Gran if he ever made her go there again, so they stayed out of the old house. Gran didn’t take any form of bullying lightly, so he wouldn’t risk her wrath. He thought about going there on his own, and finding out if there was anything to what Ellie said about there being ghosts. Something about the danger beckoned him, but he never had. He hadn’t thought about the house in years. He stared at his pale reflection in the bathroom mirror, and tried to remember other details about the nightmare.

  The house in the dream also made him think of Ellie’s doll house. It had been Gran’s when she was a girl so was made of wood rather than the usual plastic. It reminded him of the houses in the movie version of Mary Poppins. In the dream, Ellie was inside the doll house and someone was looking down at her like a giant child. It tried to pick her up and she tried to get away and she was calling for him. He couldn’t see the face of the giant being and he hadn’t wanted to. He just knew he had to get Ellie out of that house. He had thrown something at it to get it away from her, and that was when he woke up.

  “It was just a stupid anxiety dream,” he told himself out loud. It probably was only that, but it made him even more anxious to get on the road and on his way to finding Ellie. He jumped into the shower to wash away the lingering effects of the nightmare. He made himself sing “All You Need is Love” complete with the Marseillaise opening, which was a favorite mantra for banishing all types of fear. He was on the road well before the sun rose, headed back toward the national forest and county road 1015.

  He made good time and was driving the main road linking the hiking trails inside the national reserve by the time the sky began to lighten. He found the hiking trail marked on the map after stopping a couple of times to check the little markers on the trails he came to. He noticed some tread marks beside this one, but no vehicle. That was worrisome, since Irena had said the site was located on the top of the mountain and they would have had to leave a vehicle behind to get there. Maybe someone had come and taken their vehicle away. His impression about the research project was vague, but he had an idea that it involved some type of government entity that might take care of transportation as well as other mundane issues relating to the project. He stuffed the last of the deer jerky into his jacket, grabbed the half-filled water jug and headed up the trail.

  The map showed the summit to be a good four mile hike. He figured he could hike that easily in a couple of hours, if all went well. Running kept him in good enough shape, as long as the trail didn’t get too steep. He wasn’t up for any rock climbing, if it came to that. The thought gave him pause, something about it was important. He made a note to himself to be on the lookout for big rock surfaces, ones off the main trail. Overhead he noticed a hawk and took it for a good sign. Ellie had a thing for them, and he hoped knowing such details about her would be enough to guide him to where she was. The people who had her were not going to help. They might even try to put up mental barriers of some kind.

  He thought of the earlier nightmare and wondered how much resistance they might give him to getting her back. It was possible they had powers he could not even begin to fathom, like something out of a science fiction movie. He didn’t really believe in aliens or monsters, but he did believe that people were changing. He had been noticing it for the past several years, in himself and in many people he happened to meet like he had told the kid in Wind Gap. There was definitely something big brewing. This thing that Ted was involved with might be part of that trend.

  When Ellie had started her travels a few years back, she was looking to find out how wide the thing had spread. He understood that better now. He had not wanted her to go to such remote locations, and hadn’t seen the purpose for it. Ostensibly she was just sharing her love for the English language, but something else drove her. Her time at the university had planted the seeds for her global quest, especially Ted’s classes. If he had asked her about it, she wouldn’t have been able to put it into words herself. It was a half realized notion of seeking something that was unfolding in most everyone to one de
gree or another.

  Whenever people tried to make it specific, they got it wrong. That was what bothered him most about the people inside the mountain. He stopped in his tracks. Where had that expression come from “inside the mountain?” Then he understood in a flash that it was inside the mountain where they had her, some type of artificial cave maybe. Was that it? No, it was bigger. He shook his head trying to get a better sense of it, but nothing came.

  He returned to his previous line of thought. They wanted to define this new energy rising in such a way that it would serve their purposes. Their plan was to harness it, pull it out of Ellie and others like her who had more of it than most. They probably thought if they could extract it, they would gain all the benefits. They probably thought they had discovered it and so that gave them the right to exploit it for their own purposes. They would think that, not realizing how big it was, how far beyond their narrow focus. He shook his head, the thoughts were coming to him so quickly they were hard to grasp.

  He paused for a moment and took a drink of the water. He looked down the trail behind him, and thought he saw some movement, a deer perhaps. He put the cap back on the jug of water and went on. He heard the sound of twigs and turned back around. Two men were coming toward him. He stepped off the trail to let them pass. They looked like ordinary hikers. When they got to where he was, one of them greeted him, “Mr. McCane?” the man said. Surprised by this, Hez could only nod. “We’ve come to take you to see your sister,” he said. “Follow us,” with that he and the other man continued on the trail.

  Hez debated a moment with himself and then followed after them. He didn’t know if he should feel relieved or alarmed. It certainly simplified matters to have them take him to her. If that’s what they’re really going to do said the coldly rational part of his mind. It didn’t matter he realized because he was going to have to confront the organization or whatever it was that had her sooner or later any way. He had hoped to have the element of surprise; but since that was no longer the option, he would have to see what other opportunities arose.

  It did not surprise him when the men led him to a sheer cliff off to the side of the trail after they had continued to walk for a little more than an hour. It was surprising however when a doorway appeared in it, and they beckoned him to follow them inside. He did so, with a little trepidation. The corridor inside was not very well lighted but it finally led into a larger room. One of the men said something and a door on the right opened up. He motioned for Hez to follow; the other man nodded but did not follow. The room contained a large metal desk with a small plastic chair in front of it. The man sat down behind the desk and motioned for Hez to take the chair. “My name is Evan Saunders. My job is to fill you in on your sister’s status.”

  Hez nodded, “That’s really great, Mr. Saunders. So who do you represent?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean what organization?”

  The man gave a slight smile that quickly faded. “We don’t subscribe to those types of labels. If I told you I worked for the CIA, you would have all kinds of fantasies surrounding me, derived from outdated sources. That particular organization, and others like it, has long been superseded by more dexterous entities. They still exist of course, but merely as a façade.”

  “And so, you represent a more dexterous entity?”

  “So to speak. We do some intelligence gathering, but not for reasons of any government’s security. We have a more global agenda, and I see by your face that you find that alarming. And that is another reason we don’t subscribe to labels, any words I say will have associations that are not appropriate to the actuality of what we represent.”

  “Mr. Saunders, I just want to speak to my sister, whatever the actuality of what you represent. Can you help me with that?”

  “I have something to show you that may interest you along those lines,” he opened a laptop and began scrolling down the screen. After a moment or so, he pushed his chair away from the desk and looked at the wall behind him. Suddenly an image appeared there. Hez looked at it closely; it showed a room shaped like an auditorium with a rectangular glass center point. The camera closed in on the little rectangle and he saw that there were two people inside, a man and a woman. They were sitting back to back on the floor; their eyes were closed, and their elbows touched.

  Hez looked at the two of them closely; he did not recognize either one of them. “You are familiar with meditation practices?” the man asked. Hez nodded, “That’s all we are doing here, meditation.”

  “Okay, so you brought Ellie all the way up here so she can meditate?”

  The man nodded. “Your sister is talented and we want to help her realize her full potential. What we have designed here on this site will maximize her abilities far beyond anything you might imagine. Keep your eyes on the screen.”

  Hez watched the meditating couple. Nothing changed at first, and then he saw that they were starting to rise, only a little at first. After a minute or so, they were floating as much as a foot off the ground. Their eyes were still closed, and their bodies still touching.

  “Is this some kind of trick?” he asked the man.

  “No, it’s not trickery, just the power of this site combined with the skills of that young couple. They were our first test pair and they did very well, but we believe your sister and her mentor will vastly exceed those first stumbling efforts towards the goals we’ve set.”

  “And what goals would that be?” Hez asked grimly.

  “It can scarcely be put into words,” Saunders replied in a very dry tone.

  “So Ellie wants to be a part of all this?”

  “Naturally, why wouldn’t she? You know she went wandering the earth searching for something. She didn’t find it anywhere because no one had developed it until we took the lead. We usually find that our test subjects have explored many avenues looking for this gift that we offer them.” The man’s face became more animated. “We believe that whatever it is that gives them the power to perform well also creates the desire to accelerate it. It’s a synchronistic convergence between their talent and our ability to amplify that talent.”

  Hez shook his head, “Can I see Ellie now?”

  The image faded on the wall and the man stared at the blank space for a moment, then stood up and confronted Hez. “We understand your desire to look after your sister. It’s highly commendable, but we cannot let personal influences derail our research. When her first trials are over, we will arrange for you to see her then.”

  “And when will that be?”

  “Our methods are precise, but we don’t have rigid schedules. They can’t be applied to this type of research. I am not trying to make this difficult for you, but there is no way I can give you that information. We have to see how she progresses and what ensues afterwards.”

  “This is just nuts. It sounds like she’s just a lab rat to you people.”

  “No, no it’s a matter of expectations, Mr. McCane.” He took a deep breath, “It’s similar to the problem of giving you the name of our organization, or describing anything about our work. It arouses primal fears because of mistakes made in the past by other agencies. Similarly you will regard our research as dehumanizing because of how research was done in the past. We are developing something beyond those old nineteenth and twentieth century models. We are taking into account the value of subjective experience. We understand that your emotional attachment to your sister is something that exists in its own right and has value in its own right. That’s the reason we found you on the trail and brought you in to explain the situation to you. We want you to feel better about your sister’s status, so that in the future you can be supportive of her in her new role.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Try to think of it as a career move. That’s probably the closest we can come to making you understand what it involves. If your sister had found her ideal job, with excellent pay and benefits you would surely be supportive of that change in her status, isn�
��t that right?” Hez shrugged. “So if all goes according to plan, she will be spending her life in a very rewarding way, both financially and otherwise.”

  “I didn’t come all the way up here to talk her out of anything. I just came to make sure that she’s alright and nothing is going on that she isn’t okay with, okay?”

  “Yes that’s all very good. We’ll try to arrange a meeting as soon as possible. In the meantime, I’ve arranged for you to get a tour of the facility and someone to answer all your concerns.” He started moving towards the door and motioned Hez to follow. He did so, feeling somewhat like a lab rat himself, or at least a bit of a fool “Good luck to you, Mr. McCane,” Saunders said and shook his hand. A woman appeared as though on cue and led him to an elevator.

  “Can I go see my sister now?” he asked her in a weary voice.

  “I’m sorry, that’s not on the immediate agenda,” the woman said brightly. She reminded him of a flight attendant. She was attractive in the way he often found flight attendants to be. Gran had told him that when she was a girl she dreamed about being an airline stewardess, as they were called back then. She explained that it was considered a glamorous profession for women. They were selected for good looks and then given tips about make-up and wardrobe.

  Maybe that was the reason most of them still were fairly attractive. It had started a tradition that was still adhered to, if only subconsciously. He wondered if professions could develop subconscious tendencies. If they could, that made them seem more like living things, but that wasn’t a pleasant thought. If you imagined companies as living things then they would be monstrous in comparison to a human being. He did not like things that dwarfed the human, unless it was a tree. It was one of the many reasons he did not live in the city.