by Terry James
Morgan tried to speak, but managed only, “soon…”
“Soon? What’s soon, Daddy?” Lori asked, trying more to get him to talk, then to get his thought. “We will be there soon? Is that what you mean?”
Her father’s eyelids narrowed in concentration, his forehead wrinkling above his graying eyebrows. He shook his head to indicate no.
“Soon…” he said again, tried to say more, then gave up, a look of frustration on his face.
“The effects seem to be not unlike an aphasic stroke,” Gessel Kirban said from behind the wheel in the front seat. “Your husband is having trouble collecting his thoughts, then verbalizing them. But, I think that, unlike an aphasic stroke, where there is major damage on the left side of the brain, the colonel will snap out of this inability to reason. I am convinced that the precognition neuro-diviner does no permanent damage.”
Lori looked deeply into her father’s eyes. “Do you hear the doctor, Dad? You’re going to get well--soon.” She emphasized the word “soon,” and James Morgan’s tenseness seemed to diminish.
Fewer than 30 minutes later Kirban’s Jeep Wagon, followed by Lori and the GMC van, turned onto the narrow gravel road. Lori remembered the words of Grace Banyon.
“It’s an old house, that we’ve always joked about being haunted. But, don’t let it frighten you. It belonged to my aunt--Christopher’s great aunt--Annabel. Annabel Lee, as a matter-of-fact. But I don’t think she was the inspiration for Poe’s poem,” Grace had said with a laugh. “But, the old place can be pretty spooky on the proverbial ‘dark and stormy night’.”
This day was bright, but when the old dwelling came fully into view around a copse of trees, Lori could imagine, from her elevated position in the high cab of the van, that on a dark day, or stormy night, the old house could have been the inspiration for an Edgar Allen Poe poem, or story, had he seen it.
The road leading up to it had a name that could evoke thoughts of sea storms, and women with telescopes scanning the ocean’s horizon for their returning seafaring men.
“Crab Cove Road,” she thought, fit the scene, with the ancient three-story gothic-style home, standing out starkly in the blue-green grass on a bluff that overlooked the colorless Atlantic. Poe would’ve loved it, she thought, while she herded the big truck to an open space just off the rutted drive near the front of the storm-weathered house.
Lori got out of the cab and turned her eyes upward toward the home’s front turret, with its several dark windows bordered by shutters.
The house’s slat-planked, dark gray surface, with a bluish tint, needed repainting. Its once-white trim now was faded to a blotched tan. The shutters on either side of the long windows had broken slats, and, like the rest of the home, begged for fresh paint.
Grace Banyon had told them that the interior was in better shape than the exterior. Christopher, to whom her aunt, his great aunt, Annabel Lee Mitford, had deeded the house, planned to refurbish it when he could afford to. He would spend his summers doing as much to bring it back to its former glory, as his time permitted.
It was a gracious gesture--the minister offering them use of the house--Lori thought, rounding the back of the big van. Dr. Kirban was intrigued with the fact that Mrs. Mitford’s husband had been a physician. He had, Grace had told them, a full laboratory in the basement. A lab few had set foot in since the 1940s.
Just great, Lori thought, seeing Gessel Kirban help her father out of the back seat of the Jeep wagon. Just great, if one were a horror movie freak…
But, the house was remote. And, it did have a place where Dr. Kirban could work on learning more about the projects and how to help her father recover.
Kirban and Lori’s mother worked at the back of the Jeep, removing things to transfer to the home. Lori helped, but then became concerned for her father.
“Where’s Dad?” she asked.
All three looked around the new area. James Morgan was not in view.
“Dad!”
Lori trotted toward the side of the house, continuing to call.
She saw him when she rounded the corner of the rear of the home.
“Dad!” she shouted, seeing him standing on a large rocky area, looking toward the Atlantic Ocean far below. “Daddy! Don’t move!”
She ran to his side and clutched his arms. “Be careful, Daddy,” she said, her heart racing.
“It’s okay, Sunshine,” her father said, patting her arms while they wrapped around him. He freed himself from her embrace and put his arm around her.
Laura, out of breath after running toward her husband and daughter, joined them on the rocky point.
“Everything’s going to be okay now, Super L,” he said, putting his free arm around his wife, then kissing her.
Jerusalem, near daybreak, June 21, 1967
A swirling cloud surrounded him. Mini-bolts of lightning struck at him but didn’t hit him. He nonetheless sought cover. Cover that was nowhere to be found, while he seemed to glide on some unseen conveyance along the back alleys and narrow passageways between dilapidating streets.
The darkness surrounded only him, and he couldn’t understand why no one noticed. The Jerusalem natives were oblivious while he glided on a cushion of air toward the easternmost edge of the city.
He was on a mission. A mission to do what, he didn’t know. But, he did know that it was a most important mission.
The cloud, with its lightning, was gone. He stood in bright sunlight, about to step off a curb and onto a street, across from which he saw the black-hatted Jews bowing while reading from the Torah.
He looked down. He wore a black garment that covered him even to the toes of his sandals. He reached to feel the hat he wore. A large-brimmed hat. He pulled it from his head and looked at it. A black hat, like the one’s worn by the men at the Western Wall across the street.
Somehow it seemed right. But, at the same time, it bothered him. He wasn’t Jewish. He was a Christian--a Presbyterian. His robes were gray and maroon…He wore no black hat. They would know. Know that he was Presbyterian.
Something moved him, an unseen, powerful presence that forced him forward. Christopher next found himself standing beside a bowing, chanting, bearded black hat worshipper. The man paid him no attention, keeping, instead, his eyes upon the Torah he held with both hands in front of his eyes while he bowed toward the wall and the Temple Mount.
He had no Torah, himself. But, there was something in the large pocket of the black robe. The robe which was now the robe of his own faith, a gray with maroon trim robe. It was his Bible. The one his mother had given him as a teenager.
Scribbled in the upper left corner of the Bible’s inside cover were the familiar words Grace Banyon had written there on his fourteenth birthday: “Trust in the Lord with all thine heart; lean not unto thine own understanding; In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths. Proverbs 3: 5-6.”
He opened the Bible to read from the book, and something fell out of its pages. The parchment pieces! The fragments with the Hebrew words on the first: “War in heavens and on earth shall begin the consummation when first scroll words shall be found.”
On the second fragment, the words: “Watch for the bene elohim. The bene elohim deludes when approaches the great taking away.”
But, the fragments had burst into flames in front of Susie and him, while they were in the cave …had disintegrated to nothingness!
He looked again at the fragments. They had transformed into a single piece of parchment. The words were in English.
“Go to Sharkton, Maine. On Crab Cove Road is your Salvation.” In that moment of epiphany, Christopher knew what he must do. He moved forward, rolled the paper into a scroll, and stuffed it into a crack in the ancient wall.
In the next instant, the paper was being tugged, and Christopher gripped hard with his fingertips and thumb. He almost retrieved it from the crevice when he saw a dark hand that seemed to consist of nothing more than black smoke. It appeared to be attached to nothi
ng, just an armless, black hand of swirling smoke, its fingers gripping the paper and trying to wrench it from him.
“Chris!”
He heard Susie’s voice as if it were far away, down a deep shaft.
“Chris! Wake up!”
Christopher sat up in bed beside his wife, his eyes open wide, the room coming into better focus with each blink of his eyelids.
“You were having a nightmare,” she said, reaching to steady him, then helping ease him back to a lying position.
“Yes, quite a nightmare,” he said, trying to bring his thoughts again into the waking world.
Sharkton, Maine, 11:18 p.m., June 20
Unlike the huge, Victorian-gothic home’s facade, the interior had been well cared for. Grace Banyon had been right. The person the family had paid to keep things dusted and in good repair was conscientious, and the old place didn’t creak nearly so much as Lori had anticipated.
She lay near exhaustion from struggling with the van for the last several days. Her brief thoughts of her new surroundings turned to thoughts of Mark. How much she did miss him. Again, the tears came. She should be happy. Her family was together again. Her father had made a near-complete recovery, according to Gessel Kirban. Her mother had said that the recovery was a miracle.
If God could perform such a miracle in these modern times, could he perform one more for her? Could he bring Mark to her again?
Lori wiped the tears with the pillowcase and said a quick prayer to a being she didn’t know.
“Please bring him to me,” she said in a whisper. She chastised herself for doing so. Not so much because she didn’t really believe in a deity that was interested in her problems, but because she was so presumptuous as to think that after ignoring that deity, He would now snap to attention and grant her request.
“But, dear God, if you are there, please grant this prayer,” she said, wiping the tears again, before drifting off into much-needed sleep.
Upstairs, in one of the six bedrooms, Laura looked at her sleeping husband. He looked so much older than before the accident in which he, along with the Wing Commander, was reported to have been killed.
She brushed back his still dark, but graying hair from his right temple, then a tear from her own eye.
“Thanks, Lord,” she breathed. She was grateful--thankful beyond her ability to express. James was back. His sensibilities had returned, and she knew things would get better from here. Despite the things they had all been through, and the fact they were probably being pursued--by whom, and exactly why, she didn’t know--things would be better.
Gessel Kirban was determined to find out. With God’s help they would find out together.
Lori. Their sweet daughter had put up a good front. Had been strong for her mother and dad. But, she loved Mark so, missed him so much.
“Dear Lord,” Laura prayed in silence while continuing to stroke her sleeping husband’s face. “Please bring these kids together. And, please let Mark and his father have a reunion as wonderful as mine and Lori’s has been with James.”
Gessel Kirban, like his fellow travelers, was tired. But, the excitement of his new surroundings helped lift his strength to a level that would give him another hour or two of consciousness.
The basement--a full basement that served as foundation for the huge house above--was more than promised.
“My uncle, Dr. John Mitford, had a modern laboratory for its time,” Grace Banyon had told him before they had left Booth Bay. “It’s a real interesting place,” she had told him, in describing the lab.
It was indeed a most interesting place, he thought, while he arranged the instruments of his own experimentation--things brought from his private Taos laboratory. Kirban turned the brass levers of the several Bunsen burner spigots. Hearing the hiss, and smelling the gas, he smiled. He was home again…
He opened one of three boxes of the same size, and carefully removed its contents. He held the gleaming golden precognition neuro-diviner at arm’s length and smiled again.
Here, there would be time to learn all there was to know about this marvelous instrument. He wondered how he might begin the process of convincing Laura Morgan that her husband and daughter must again wear the helmet.
Taos 12:33 a.m., June 21, 1967
Thoughts of his father pricked at Mark’s troubled semi-sleep. He was dog-tired but couldn’t relax to drift far enough away from his worries to drop into that restful realm, toward which he struggled.
He saw his Dad’s face amidst a swirling cloud of gray-blackness. It was the face as he remembered it when his father would sit across from him at the kitchen table. It was again 1947, and his Dad was helping him construct one of the model balsa wood gliders they both loved.
Mark’s sleep-thoughts next centered on a beautiful, smiling face. Her eyes sparked love for him in a way he knew would come only once in a lifetime. His eyes snapped open and he sat up in bed, blinking, trying to regain his sensibility.
Lori. Every part of him ached for her, longed to hold her close, feel her warmth and vibrance, return her love for him. He sat on the edge of the bed, wondering where he was, his thoughts still a blur.
Mark couldn’t see his surroundings beyond his own feet. Not even the carpet beneath them. Was he losing his sight?
The room filled with thick smoke, which had no odor. He fanned it with his hands, trying to see through the opaqueness. A brilliant stream of light pierced the cloud, and it opened a tunnel through which he caught a glimpse of something…someone.
Lori…It was Lori!
She stood, beckoning him. Dressed in a white gown of sheer translucence, she held out her arms to him, the gown’s diaphanous sleeves undulating, a gentle wind moving them in slow motion while her long, slender fingers bid him to come to her. He tried to move from his sitting position on the edge of the bed. But, it was no longer the bed. It was a big stone of some sort, and he struggled to get up. Finally, he was free of it, and he tried to move toward Lori, who smiled, turned, and began walking away into the smoky distance. She turned back to him, then, and again beckoned him with a motion of her hand.
He followed. Tried to catch up to her. His legs moved as if they were trying to run through thick oil. He managed to draw to within several feet of her and reached to take hold of the gown she wore, which flowed gracefully behind her while she glided forward. He grasped the gown, felt its cool, silky softness in his hand. She would be in his arms within moments…
When he reached to embrace her, he felt nothing. Lori was gone!
He stood in the smoky surroundings, holding the gown. The girl he loved was gone!
He saw in the distance, a strange, rock-covered barrier. The scene before him became clear while he walked toward the huge wall-like structure. He felt the surface with his fingertips. Had Lori gone through an opening somewhere along the wall?
He continued to feel, probing with his fingers the deep cracks along its ancient surface. His fingers touched something in one of the cracks, and he grasped it, pulling it from the opening. A thick piece of rolled up paper. He unscrolled it and read the words: “Watch for the bene elohim. The bene elohim deludes when approaches the great taking away,” it read.
The words then changed before his astonished eyes: “Go to Sharkton, Maine. On Crab Cove Road is your Salvation.”
The words became red hot in appearance, then white hot, and he felt their heat. The instructions burned themselves into his brain, just before the paper burst into flame, causing him to drop it.
Mark blinked, finding himself standing in the suite’s small kitchen. Another sleepwalking episode! Had it been another of the night terrors, with the dark beings directing his movements? Or something other?
He looked in the refrigerator, withdrew a can of beer, and searched the cabinet drawers for a church key. He opened the can, took a sip, and sat at the small table. It seemed so real, yet so surreal. What did it mean?
Mark rolled the cold can over his forehead, while he tried to remember deta
ils. Tried to remember Lori, and her part in the…dream…or whatever it had been.
His thoughts could center on only one part of the nightmare, the words on the paper that had burst into flames.
Over the Atlantic, June 23, 1967
The 707-co-pilot looked to the western sky through the windshield. He shifted to get a better look at the looming blackness he hadn’t noticed just minutes earlier.
“Johnny, you get any word on that weather?” the co-pilot pointed out the storm they were approaching at more than 500 knots.
“Where’d that come from?” Johnny Bristow asked, rising partially from his seat to see the building thunderstorm. “There’s been nothing about a system of that size,” he said.
“Better get us some new numbers,” Jeff Blackston said from the left seat. “Better do it quick, because I don’t think we’ve got much time to adjust,” the pilot concluded.
The ride had been smooth, uneventful. Just the way Christopher Banyon liked it. He had dozed off and on for the past several hours since leaving Paris.
He looked to see the angelic face of his wife, who slept soundly beside him.
“Looks like something’s brewing,” Randall Prouse said, leaning over Susie while standing in the aisle.
Susie stirred and struggled to find consciousness, awakened by their big friend, who stood above her talking to her husband.
“What’s wrong?” she asked, able, finally, to understand there was a problem.
“It’s nothing much, I don’t think. Just a thunderstorm up in front of us,” the archaeologist said, trying not to sound alarmed.
“The captain will probably be telling us to buckle up, just for precaution,” he said. “I better get in my seat.”
