Metamorphosis

by Sesh Heri

  “Yes,” I said. “In my feet and legs.”

  “Hold your position,” Jack said.

  I stood there, holding my arms out. In a second or two more, I felt a tingling run up my spine to the top of my head. In a few more moments I felt the tingling turn into a strong force, like a magnetic field, and I began to hear strange music, something like the sounds of harps and pipe organs harmonically nested into one sound; the music hummed, whispered, and undulated in my ears. I also began to experience the intense feeling of being watched. I looked around into the trees, but saw nothing.

  “I’m getting down,” I said.

  I climbed down off the rock and descended back to the ground to where Jack stood.

  “Did you hear the music?” Jack asked.

  I nodded. “I heard it,” I said. “Sounded like a harp.”

  “MJ-Seven scientists say that’s the sound of the time machine,” Jack said. “They think it’s still working in some fashion.”

  Jack walked forward out of the grove, toward the edge of the clearing overlooking the valley. I walked with him. He stopped where the clearing began to slant away into the forest.

  “When I first came upon this spot I was alone,” Jack said. “It was at dusk, the last rays of the setting sun coming over the top of the crest behind us, cutting through the fog that was pouring into the valley from over Sonoma Mountain. I was coming down the mountain and had turned off the main trail to see what lay beyond the next rise. And this is what I found. And while I was standing precisely here pondering my discovery, I looked out upon that stretch of the valley immediately below us there— see that little clearing?— and I saw a beast coming out of a bank of fog. It was huge. I am absolutely certain that it was a dinosaur. I saw it pass silently across the meadow with such incredible grace— it moved with the lightness of a ballet dancer— it did not lumber. And as it passed into the center of the clearing, I could see through the monster’s skin to its underlying muscle and bone— just as if the rays of the setting sun that cut through the fog also x-rayed the creature, and then, only a moment later, that hulking thing passed on across the clearing, and, before reaching the trees on the other side, faded away into nothingness, faded away like a cloud itself. But it wasn’t a cloud.”

  “Was that when you contacted Nikola Tesla?” I asked.

  “No,” Jack said. “Not just then. I had no thought of Nikola Tesla just then. To me, at that time, the name Nikola Tesla meant very little. He was but a forgotten inventor of electrical devices, one of Thomas Edison’s assistants. No, when I saw this dinosaur come out across the clearing I had no thought of anything, except the very clear perception that I had absolutely no conception of the real nature of the universe. I somehow realized that in seeing that dinosaur I had actually been looking millions of years into the past— I had literally been looking through the very veils of Time Itself! And so I— “

  Jack had stopped speaking. He had turned his back to the valley to face me as he talked, and now I could see that his eyes were fixed upon something behind me in the branches of the oak trees.

  “Don’t move,” Jack said.

  I froze in my tracks.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  “A shape,” Jack said, “a shadow.”

  “Where?” I asked.

  “In the trees back there above us,” Jack said. “It—“

  I felt an instinctive urge to turn about, and I turned, and as I turned, I looked up toward the trees, and I saw, coming at us from the highest branches of the oaks, a flapping black-brown blur of motion, something like a giant moth. It came flapping toward us rapidly, and, as it got within a few yards of us overhead, I saw that it was the figure of a man with large wings, like those of a moth. The shape of the thing’s head was obscured by the intense glow of its two red eyes. It came flapping toward us in the sky. Jack and I dropped down against the earth into the dry grass, and the giant moth-man flew directly over us. When it was directly over us, it let out a horrible, high-pitched screech, and I received a very clear thought projected from the moth-man’s mind: “GET OUT!”

  The moment after I received that clear thought, the flapping moth-man instantly disappeared in the sky.

  Jack and I lay there in the high grass— lay there motionless looking up at the sky for a moment, and then Jack said: “See what I mean?”

  Jack and I did not leave the clearing quickly, but we left it immediately. We did not tarry, nor did we speak. We mounted our horses and rode away and did not look back. We went back down into the redwood forest, and descended the shadowed slope. In a while we were back at the lake. Jack did not pause, but kept his horse going, now down another trail, a shorter route to the valley below. Soon we emerged from the redwood forest and reached the broad, sandy road that led around the edge of the lower pasture. Jack turned from the main road into an opening in a fence, and rode out across the hills. I went through the fence opening, and came up beside Jack on my horse.

  “What was that thing?” I asked.

  “I call it a moth-man,” Jack said. “The native Indian medicine man I interviewed called it Sesu-khenti-sha. That’s what he called it. The natives of these parts are practically extinct. But I managed to find one of their wise men still living in Benecia. His Spanish forefathers interbred with the native populace, so he was more Spanish than Indian. But he still had some of the old knowledge.”

  “Sesu-khenti-sha?” I asked. “Is that the way it’s said?”

  Jack nodded, “Sesu-khenti-sha.”

  “What does it mean?” I asked.

  “Even the medicine man didn’t know exactly what that name means,” Jack said. “He said that the word was not a part of their native tongue, but was an old name learned from bearded white men who traveled in these parts long ago. The white men told the medicine man’s ancestors that the moth-man was Sesu-khenti-sha. The medicine man used the name to mean something like ‘spirit-guardian.’”

  “How many times have you seen the moth-man?” I asked.

  “A few,” Jack said. “I think about…four, in all, including just now. I don’t like seeing it.”

  “Neither do I,” I said.

  “I don’t often go to that clearing,” Jack said. “In fact, I’ve made it a point to stay away— especially after what happened two years ago.”

  “What was that?” I asked.

  “It began with me noticing something,” Jack said. “On the mountain-ward side of that big rock up there I one day noticed a carving near its base, a kind of bas-relief. It was a cross inscribed by a circle. This kind of glyph is commonly found on rocks throughout California, especially to the south among the lands of the Chumash. I recognized it as a sort of sign or indicator pointing down toward the earth, and I noticed that the precise spot in the earth at which it was pointing was somewhat sunken; it was a low spot at the base of the rock. I kicked around there in the dirt awhile and found nothing. Later, I brought a small shovel with me up on the pommel of my saddle and dug around at that spot. Well, I found something. I hit pay dirt!”

  “You found a treasure?” I asked.

  “One might call it a vast treasure,” Jack said, “if one knows the true valuation of things. What I found was a knob of metal, something like the finial on a brass bed-post, only this thing wasn’t made of brass, but of some unknown metal of a color that is almost impossible for me to convey in words. The closest I can come is to call it cherry-red— a rich, cherry-red composed of countless translucent, lacquer-like layers of all the varied hues of red so that its surface glowed and iridesced from its every underlay. The thing was shaped rather oddly too, and that shape is also hard to describe, but basically it was an oblate spheroid of metal, about four inches across and inscribed with some kind of hieroglyphs.”

  “Egyptian?” I asked.

  “No,” Jack said, “definitely not Egyptian. I don’t know what they were. They were mostly abstract designs, something perhaps similar to Egyptian, perhaps even something from which the Egyptian pi
ctograms were derived, but not themselves Egyptian.”

  “This…’knob,’” I asked, “was embedded in the ground? Did you dig it out?”

  “I couldn’t dig it out,” Jack said. “It was more than embedded. It was attached. It was attached to a pipe-like thing further underneath it. I discovered how it was attached as I dug away the earth. And I pulled at the knob and pipe-work for awhile, but none of it would come loose. I concluded that the whole thing was much larger and deeply buried in the ground. I had no idea how larger. So I covered the pipe and knob back up, covered it with earth again and came back later— this time with a hack-saw.”

  “You tried to saw the top knob loose,” I said.

  “I tried,” Jack said. “But I couldn’t. I only ruined the blade of the saw trying to cut the surface of that pipe.”

  “You couldn’t cut through it?” I asked.

  “Cut through it?” Jack exclaimed. “Why, I couldn’t even scratch it! I’d never seen anything like it. Well, I was about to give up on the whole thing when I decided to make one last try of detaching the knob from the pipe. I don’t know how it occurred to me, but I got the notion that the knob might have been made to screw on to the pipe, and I started twisting the knob and— sure enough— that knob began to thread its way off of the pipe upon which it was mounted— and— I couldn’t believe it— it threaded off exactly in the same direction that a knob manufactured by our present civilization would thread off of a pipe!”

  “You were able to remove the knob,” I said.

  “It came off in my hand,” Jack said. “It came off in my hand, and— talk about treasure! Well! You can imagine! I covered the hole that I had dug back up and stamped it well down, and scattered a few leaves about carefully, and went away. I came down the mountain, rode back to the cottage, and put that knob in my safe. Next morning, I came into the room and everything— all the books and papers in the room— had been scattered about mysteriously!”

  “Someone broke into the safe,” I said.

  “Oh no,” Jack said. “None of that. I opened the safe, and there sat the knob, just where I had placed it the evening before. Oh, no. No one had touched the safe. And I don’t believe anyone came into the house either. I sleep only a few feet away from that safe, and I would have heard someone prowling about.”

  “Then how did the things in the room get scattered?” I asked.

  “I had no idea then,” Jack said, “but now Mr. Tesla believes that the knob produced some kind of temporal distortion in the room, and that the movement of the books and papers was the result of them being displaced in time. I also talked to that Indian medicine man about it, and he agreed with Mr. Tesla. He said that I had handled that object too much and that I was now bound to it in some way. Perhaps that’s why, up to now I’m the only one around here who has seen all these strange sights— wooly mammoths walking across the alfalfa fields in the evening, strange men in white robes up on the mountain who suddenly disappear. A number of oddities. Of course, I didn’t understand any of that just then when it happened. Well, I took that knob down to Berkeley to the university and showed it to a professor there with whom I’m acquainted, and through him I had that knob analyzed, had its metal and its inscriptions analyzed. And soon the answer came back to me. The answer was that the knob could not be analyzed. It was beyond analysis. The metal out of which it was made was utterly foreign and unknown. The hieroglyphs inscribed upon its surface were a sealed mystery. The experts had no answers or explanations for me. And they wanted nothing to do with the knob! I was told to take the thing away, take it away and never bring it back! Those were their exact words: Never bring it back! Well, I didn’t know what to make of that; I’d never experienced anything like that before in my life. So, I just brought the knob back with me up here to the ranch. I thought of the mysterious scattering of books and papers in the cottage, and I suspected that, somehow, the knob had something to do with that. So I decided I wouldn’t put the knob back in the safe. Well, I had some other safes nearby. They were in my new house that had just been completed— Wolf House. It had just been finished, and I had a large safe in it, and also a smaller safe, a secret safe the existence of which no one knew anything about, except Charmian. She knew about it. Not even the men who built the house knew about this other safe. And that’s where I put the knob. I locked it in the safe secreted in my new house.”

  “Wolf House,” I said.

  “That’s right,” Jack said. “And that night, I awoke to discover that Wolf House was ablaze.”

  “Your new house— “ I said.

  “It burned to the ground,” Jack said. “Come on.”

  Jack started his horse off in a gallop. I followed behind him on my horse over a gentle hill. On the other side a thick wood of trees and bushes spread before us. We sped into an opening in the wood and came upon another trail that led up a hill into a thicket. Up the hill we went at a bit of a gallop. At the top of the hill I could see the trail lay before us in a series of undulations right through the thick of the wood, like the back of some sea serpent. Jack kept his horse moving in a steady gallop, and I tried to keep up. At the top of the next hill, Jack pulled his horse to a stop, turned about, and waited for me to catch up.

  I got to the top of the hill, and said, “I’m not much of a rider.”

  “You’re doing all right,” Jack said. “Come on.”

  And off he went again down the trail in a cloud of dust.

  Up and down we rode on this undulating road of dirt and gravel rock, like the riders on a rollercoaster. We whizzed over the hills and through the trees, and then came down the slope of a final hill and a curve in the road that ended in another stand of redwoods. Jack slowed his horse, I slowed mine, but we kept on down the road, and the redwoods seem to pull back to the right of us like a curtain and reveal the jagged outlines of an ancient stone ruin— only it wasn’t ancient— it was only two years old— and it was all that was left of Jack’s house— “Wolf House.”

  Jack stopped, dismounted, and tied the reins of his horse to a small tree. I got off my horse and tied my horse to a tree as well. We walked toward the ruins now surrounded by wild grass in front. Redwoods stood to the sides and back of the remaining structure. It was a strange heap of masonry walls made of rough-hewn chocolate-maroon volcanic rock. I could see indications in the shapes of what had once been doorways, window openings, and chimneys. The line of the walls was configured like some fantastic sculpture made to represent utter catastrophe. That could have been its title: “Catastrophe,” or perhaps “Desolation.”

  “The foundation and walls are still perfect,” Jack said. “The heat generated by a house fire has practically no effect on volcanic rock.”

  “How did this happen?” I asked.

  “There are a number of versions of how this happened,” Jack said. “My building contractor has given the official version: spontaneous combustion from oily rags left by the workmen.”

  “But that’s not what really happened,” I said. “Is it?”

  “No,” Jack said. “Few people know what really happened. Everyone else speculates and imagines and believes. Most of the beliefs involve the act of arson. Some believe that disaffected Socialists who accuse me of betraying the cause set fire to the house as a statement about my hypocrisy— to throw a spotlight on my bloated capitalistic luxuries. Others point the finger at Eliza’s husband— her ex-husband now. Still others actually point the finger at Charmian. People love to point the finger, especially stupid people. The more stupid they are the more they love to point.”

  “What really happened?” I asked.

  “Something that could not— cannot— be told to the stupid people,” Jack said. “Something they cannot— could not— ever comprehend— something that the masses of the world’s work-beasts would run from in horror. Something the know-it-all pseudo-intellectuals of the world could not be told— because if they were told, they would only laugh and sneer and mock. You see, their mocking laughter is on
ly a mask for the fear they really feel, the fear that comes with the dim realization that the world over which they believe they rule is only one world among countless others— countless other systems and powers over which they have no power. You know that behind such mocking laughter at majestic mysteries lies cowardice, weakness, and the vanity of fools? With the Little Mind goes the Little Heart— the coward, the whore, and the swine. They cannot glance up from their muck to see the sky! They have no knowledge of the stars. And what really happened to this house involves the sky and the stars and the shifting of etheric worlds.”

  Jack walked forward and entered an opening that must have once been the front door of the house. I followed him into the ruins. We came to a center courtyard with a long rectangular pool. I looked about at the walls, took hold of a rock that afforded a hand-hold, and pulled myself up along the wall and climbed until I reached its top. I pulled myself up and sat down on the top of the wall.

  “What happened?” I asked.

  “Majestic Seven had motion picture cameras secretly mounted in trees all about this valley,” Jack said from the courtyard below. “All this I learned only later. They had discovered the time machine here beneath the valley floor before I did. Their secret excavations started on the opposite side of the valley where those teeth-like peaks rise up. They had drilled down deeply into the opposite mountain range and had come upon a vast labyrinth of passageways containing cyclopean machines, a network of giant metal rods, something like a vast pipe-organ powered by the vibrations of the earth itself, and all of it apparently tuned to the movements of the earth and moon about the sun. At the time I discovered the knob, they had not yet started their investigations of the part of the machine that lies beneath my ranch. And only too late did word reach them about the knob I had found. Through the Berkeley professors and the engineers and scholars that were consulted word reached Majestic Seven. But somehow— at some point in the professors’ analysis of the knob— word reached other ears as well. And whether this leakage of information was accidental or through betrayal or espionage, the word that I had unearthed a part of the time machine traveled around the world to reach the highest levels of policy— it traveled to the throne of England— to the President of France— to Russia— to Germany— and to Mars. This all happened in a flash. And so before Majestic Seven could contact me, the knob was taken from my possession by other parties. But because of the cameras mounted in the trees all around this valley, Majestic Seven was able to film the event of the knob being taken.”