The Rapture Dialogues: Dark Dimension (The Second Coming Chronicles Book 1)

by Terry James

  Her God paid attention to details, Laura mused.

  “The hum! Hear the hum?” the Israeli said, stopping, turning his head to better hear.

  “Yes. It’s like a thumping, an electrical, a buzzing, transformer sound,” Laura answered.

  “Yes. Exactly,” Kirban said, “although it is not as loud, or as irritating as when I last heard it.”

  They began to move forward again. Kirban stopped abruptly, when he and Laura heard voices at the same instant.

  A man and a woman rounded the corner of a corridor leading off the hallway they walked. Kirban recognized the scientists, who wore long white lab coats. The same man and woman he had seen the night he hid in the shadows…

  But, now there was nowhere to hide! They were exposed in the narrow hallway, which now seemed better illuminated than before. They would be found out!

  Laura and the scientist moved close to the wall to their right, Gessel wishing they could melt into the very wall itself--step through it, as did the dark, sinister figures from his time before in this corridor.

  The man and the woman continued to walk, and talk, headed directly toward the two huddled against the wall.

  Why had the pair from the forbidden area not seen them? They seemed not to know the two intruders were only a few feet in front and to the left of them. The man and woman passed them by, the woman gesticulating while she talked.

  “All has worked perfectly to this point. This is an excellent test. Our theory will at last become publishable fact,” the voices trailed off as the scientists moved farther down the corridor, then turned right onto another hallway.

  Kirban and Laura looked into each other’s eyes. There was nothing to be said. Neither wanted to question the series of miracles that continued to clear the way while they moved toward the strange regions ahead.

  Neither did they now feel the need to travel the corridors in the fashion of thieves. If the Lord had brought them this far, He would finish what He had started, Laura thought. Now, like her companion, she walked with more confidence--without fear.

  The ominous hum began to increase in ear-assaulting intensity. Heart-like thumping pulsed more loudly with each step they took toward the area where Kirban had been several nights earlier.

  “We are almost there,” the Israeli scientist said, searching for the large steel door he had entered before.

  What if this door or the others were locked? He had no card. They would be impossible to open if locked--

  “There!” he said in an excited whisper. “This is the door through which I entered.”

  He grabbed the thumb-latch handle he had tried that night. Locked! Now what to do? “We will never get through to the lab I saw unless we can get through this door,” he said, his mind racing, trying to concoct another way.

  “God will provide,” Laura said.

  She amazed herself. How did she know--with such certainty--it was God’s idea for them to pass through the doorway?

  Both stood away from the locked steel door and looked at the brass latch that was welded on the heavy metal surface of the door’s left side. In that moment of helplessness, both sensed something would happen. Something would get them into the secretive areas beyond the doors.

  Laura reached to again try the latch. When she pushed downward on the thumb plate above the handle, the device unlatched. Kirban grabbed the heavy door and helped her pull it open far enough for them both to squeeze through the opening.

  Before either could marvel over yet another minor miracle, they found themselves immersed in an invisible sea of vibrations and sounds, undulating sounds that set-in motion strange sensations within their brains. Intensive wave-like cerebral convolutions that evoked at the same time great sadness and manic elation.

  Laura put her palms over her ears, so painful was the assault. Kirban pulled her to himself and tried to comfort her, while they huddled in the near-darkness.

  Just as abruptly as the audible attack on their senses began, it stopped. The familiar thumping, heartbeat-like sound resumed.

  “It’s this way,” the scientist said, sure now that they were very near the oval room he had been drawn to several evenings earlier.

  Yes! There they were, the huge double doors. No handles. The long rectangular glass windows at his eye-level.

  “This is it, Laura!” he whispered excitedly. “This is where I saw the activity.”

  “Dear Lord,” Laura said, her eyes closed for the brief prayer. “Your will be done,” she said, concluding, “in your precious Name, Amen.”

  “Amen,” Kirban agreed.

  The Israeli guided her by her right arm, urging her to step up to the narrow windows inset in the doors. He took the right; she took the left.

  The room was alive with activity, white-smocked men and women moving quickly about, checking things at various positions along the walls.

  Laura saw a dozen people seated at console-like stations, each wearing a gleaming gold-colored helmet. The headgear glinted with the lights of many colors that blinked from their positions along the continuous, rounded wall.

  The helmeted people sat erect, staring straight ahead. Shadows within the vast dome-ceilinged room obscured facial features.

  Gessel Kirban spoke in a whisper. “That stainless steel platform at the center of the room--that is where I saw the young man and woman. I cannot remember precisely, but something in the back of my mind urges me to believe the young man was Mark Lansing.”

  “Mark?” Laura said almost at full volume. She then lowered her voice.

  “And the girl? Was it Lori?”

  “I’m sorry, but I don’t know your daughter. She is working with Dr. Gerhardt Frobe--my work rarely crosses paths with his. All I know is what Mark told me.”

  “And does he--this Gerhardt Frobe--have anything to do with this project?” Laura questioned, hearing the hum and feeling it beginning to increase in vibrating intensity.

  “I cannot remember, from that night. But, again, something says to my thoughts that yes, Frobe might very well have been here.”

  The huge room seemed a living organism. Each thumping beat of the vibrations caused the amber glow to pulse brightly, then subside, before the next pulse again illuminated the group of twelve who sat staring straight ahead beneath their golden helmets.

  Voices from behind Laura and the Israeli scientist snapped their attention from activities within the room they viewed through the slotted windows. Someone was approaching and like in the hallway when the two passed them by, there was no place to hide!

  Dr. Gerhardt Frobe, flanked on either side by two men in white lab coats, walked toward Laura and Kirban. No use to run. Impossible to get away, now.

  But, the trio of scientists walked past them and pushed the big double doors, then walked into the chamber. The men paid no heed to the intruders, who stood aside, their faces masks of astonishment.

  Chapter 13

  Randall Prouse drove the Jeep he had talked Akmid into loaning. He swerved to avoid potholes that dotted the narrow roadway leading from east Jerusalem, up toward Moriah and the foot of Mount Olivet.

  Christopher held on with all his strength to the top of the Jeep’s door, each lurch making him feel as if his skeletal frame would come apart. Susie sat in the rear right seat, fighting, like her husband, to maintain an upright position during the ordeal.

  “Sorry,” Prouse yelled to be heard above the Jeep’s straining engine sounds. He downshifted, then upshifted, while he maneuvered the vehicle over streets built upon 30 layers of previous generations.

  “These things don’t usually have any springs left,” the archaeologist said, again grinding the gears so the engine would be able to pull the grade ahead.

  Poor Susie, Christopher thought, looking around to see her struggle against the violent shaking. Always, he thought, she managed to look serene…to remain calm.

  He had begged her to stay behind at the hotel. “No,” she had told him in a gentle, not rebellious way. “The Lord want
s my prayers, too,” she had said.

  It was her choice, but it was hard on her. Christopher understood why Ruth Prouse as often as not in recent times stayed behind when his friend Randy came to Jerusalem for one archaeological venture or another. As a matter of fact, the minister thought, while Prouse continued to herd the World War II vintage Jeep toward the Mount of Olives, Dr. Randall Prouse’s times spent in the Holy Land were known to be adventures, as much as mere ventures.

  The weather had cooled significantly in the last ten minutes since they left the point where Akmid had turned the Jeep over to Prouse. Clouds above the Mount of Olives ahead seemed to be coalescing into a developing storm.

  “Uh oh!”

  Prouse’s exclamation made Christopher scan the roadway and sides of the road ahead. His eyes fell upon a band of six men wearing traditional Arab clothing, all with burnoose headdresses and beards.

  Each had an automatic weapon, with ammo belts strapped across their shoulders in bandoleer fashion.

  “Better start those prayers, now,” Prouse said, eyeing the six men, who stepped into the Jeep’s path. They all held the weapons in a posture that threatened.

  When the archaeologist brought the Jeep to a stop in the middle of the narrow road, the apparent leader of the Arabs stepped forward. Christopher and Susie took their friend’s advice, and silently prayed.

  The man with the weapon shouted something in Arabic but kept the automatic rifle in the order arms position.

  Prouse said something back to them, and the leader turned to jabber something to the other men.

  “They want to know where we’re headed,” the archaeologist said, turning only his head so both Christopher and his wife could hear him. “I said that we are looking for a holy man we’ve heard of, where the woman might be cured with his miracle healing.”

  The leader of the armed band turned again and spoke in a suspicious tone to Prouse, who responded again in Arabic.

  The men looked astonished. They jumped to the side of the road, the angry leader, with urgency, motioning the Jeep and its occupants to pass. He shouted curses at them while they went on their way.

  “What on earth did you say to them, Randy?” the minister said, amazed at their response.

  “Told ‘em she has a rare disease that kills within two days. Said it’s one of the most contagious diseases in the world. Said there’s no known cure. That this holy man, who we were told we would find near the Mount of Olives, is her only hope. Told them all of us in the Jeep will most likely die, just because we’ve been this close to her,” Prouse explained without breaking a smile. His passengers could not show the same restraint.

  “Do you think I sinned, Chris?” the archaeologist said, continuing his deadpan tone and expression. “Do you think God considered it a sure enough lie?”

  “I’ll have to consult personally with Him on that one, my friend,” Christopher said, choking out his words between his laughter.

  The 12 helmeted people sat in a straight, stiff posture behind their waist-level consoles. All stared straight ahead. The walls blinked with points of light that were many colored.

  Lab-coated scientists checked the helmets and consoles from time to time, and inspected the many electronic instruments inset within the rounded walls of the gigantic chamber.

  Laura Morgan and Gessel Kirban now stood without fear within the room, the colors reflecting off their skin and the white clothing they wore. Laura had never experienced a complete lack of anxiety like she did at this moment. Something within her made her know she was, somehow, stronger than any force of evil this place could bring forth to challenge them.

  “They have no idea we’re here,” she said, looking to Kirban, who, like her, was both fascinated and astounded at their apparent invisibility to all in the chamber.

  “See! There!” The scientist pointed to the floor surrounding the gleaming, chrome-like platform.

  Dark creatures passed through the floor at several points. They were somewhat human looking, yet much larger, and not of solid matter. More of them emerged from the floor of the chamber, some walking about, some seeming to float just above the floor. Some entered the bodies of the scientists, then stepped out again. Each time they entered the humans’ bodies, they assumed the shape of the person, so that only the human was visible to Laura and Kirban.

  “What are they?” Kirban said, as if to himself.

  Laura stood mute, watching with amazement while the sinister forms moved to the helmeted humans. The dark beings sat in the console chairs, appearing to take up residence within the sitting people.

  Within several seconds, the inhuman forms were no longer visible to Laura and the scientist, who saw, then, the raised metal platform split apart.

  Two figures came up from beneath, arising slowly, until the conveyance upon which they stood was level with the platform’s surface. Both people who had emerged had their backs to Laura and Kirban. Both wore white lab coats. Laura determined that one of the new arrivals in the chamber was a man, the other a woman. The man reached to remove the other person’s lab coat, revealing an almost nude woman, whose slim, straight body told Laura it was a young, though fully developed female.

  The platform on which the two stood began a slow rotation, until the girl and her partner faced Laura and Gessel Kirban.

  “It’s Lori!” Laura shouted, starting to lunge toward Lori and the man who now began attaching electrodes to her body.

  Kirban grabbed Laura, restraining her, yet trying to comfort her. “No, Laura. We cannot do anything now. Remember--the Lord is in control, even of this…”

  Laura relaxed some but burned with urge to attack the man touching her daughter.

  “What is he doing?” she said.

  “Electrodes of some sort. He is attaching electrodes for some reason. I do not think they are dangerous to her.”

  “How do you know that? How can you say that? How can you be sure?” Laura had panic in her voice.

  Kirban gripped her, knowing she would rush the platform if he released her.

  “Let us see…the Lord will provide,” the scientist said.

  Another man in a lab coat approached the two on the platform. He handed the man who had been attaching the electrodes a gleaming, gold-colored helmet, like those worn by the 12 seated around the room.

  The scientist placed the helmet upon Lori’s head, adjusting it until it was in place. He attached more electrodes--to the helmet first, then to her body. Laura and Gessel Kirban stared in astonishment while a black, cloud-like, human-shaped creature stepped from the body attaching the electrodes to Lori. The thing then stepped into Lori’s body, assuming her shape, so that the beast-apparition could no longer be seen.

  Laura again struggled to free herself from her friend’s grip. She cried tears of frustration, but more so, of anger, while she fought to free herself.

  “No, Laura, no--not yet. The Lord will take care of her,” Gessel said, restraining her.

  With the girl hooked to the ominous electronic machinery, the scientist who had done the attachments stepped from the platform. An amber glow began to grow brighter, and the sounds in the room increased in intensity. The thumping that had ceased earlier now returned, and it felt to Laura and Kirban like their own hearts bumping in their bodies. The pulsing caused their heads to ache with each throb, and both held their ears to try to quell the pain.

  The pulsing subsided, and a low, growling sound took its place. The words began as an indecipherable groan. They became the words spoken in the language Gessel Kirban recognized as his own.

  “It is Hebrew,” he said.

  “What are they saying?” Laura said, knowing now that the words were being uttered in unison by everyone who wore the helmets. She could see her daughter’s mouth moving, while Lori stared straight ahead, unblinking, as if in a trance.

  “Time has come…the Jew will die…the Jew must die,” Gessel repeated, translating the menacing Hebrew incantations.

  “What does it mean?�
�� Laura said, wiping the tears from her eyes.

  “Something to do with our prayer instructions from the light, I imagine,” Kirban said, still concentrating on translating the words.

  “Betray the Jews…destroy the Jews,” Kirban said, repeating the deep, groaning words that seemed to come from something other than the humans uttering them.

  Robert Cooper sat in the darkness, behind Gerhardt Frobe’s desk. His face pointed straight ahead, his eyes showing only the whites while they turned upward within their sockets.

  His facial features contorted in an expression that was something other than human. The words poured from his mouth in a language he had never learned, while he sat erect in Frobe’s chair, his arms outstretched, his palms flat upon the desk.

  “Murder them all…kill the Jews,” he said in Hebrew, and in a growling voice that vomited from the deepest regions of hell.

  Mark Lansing rode in the rear seat of the F-4E, the golden helmet he wore glinting in the Middle Eastern morning sky. The bird had thundered off the runway only ten minutes earlier, its afterburners glowing in the unusual early morning darkness. They left behind a brewing storm unlike any he had seen. It seemed to have formed, black and ominous over Jerusalem, and over the base from which the flight of Israeli, French-made Super-Mirage fighters, and the single F-4E launched their attack. They were now at 21,000 feet, screaming southward toward Egyptian territory and the bases they, along with other Israeli flights of fighter-bombers, were assigned to destroy.

  How would the precognition neuro-diviner perform? The United States Defense Department and the Israeli Defense force had put their complete confidence in the technology, and in his ability to use it.

  Yet he had no more than 20 hours of simulator training, no actual practice. Gerhardt Frobe had assured him that the PND would take over once it was switched on. But, Mark lacked the scientist’s absolute confidence now, while he bowed his face to place his eyes upon the soft rubber of the scope’s viewfinder.