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

by Terry James

  “Dad…”

  Mark’s words choked in his emotion- constricting throat, but he managed, with eyes glistening, to say, “It’s me, Mark. Dad, it’s your son.”

  Clark Lansing looked at the younger man’s face, but still there was no recognition.

  Mark leaned forward in front of his father on both knees and hugged his Dad. Clark Lansing made no attempt to return the embrace, his arms hanging limp at his sides.

  Mark loosened his grip and held his father at arm’s length.

  “We’re going to get you well, Dad. That’s a promise. You’re going to get well real soon.”

  The prematurely old man’s eyes seemed to focus, understanding crossing his age-creased face.

  “Soon,” Clark Lansing said, parroting his son’s words.

  “We’re ready, if you are, Major.”

  The tall agent named Browne stood in the doorway of Suite 310, watching Mark help his father to his feet from the small sofa.

  “The flight will leave as soon as we get there,” Browne said, picking up one of Clark’s suitcases.

  “Thanks,” Mark said, lifting another bag from the floor, then assisting his father from the suite. The older man looked into the eyes of the son he didn’t recognize. His own eyes narrowed in concentration.

  “Soon,” he said, with authority in his voice.

  “Soon,” he repeated, before his eyes again took on a stuperous glaze.

  Mark watched out the porthole of the little T-39 Saberliner, seeing the earth tones of brown, gold and red make the transition to varying tones of green. His father sat beside him, his seat partially reclining. He was asleep, having said nothing since they left the complex at Taos.

  They would touch down at Egland Air Force Base in just over 2 hours, the pilot told him. There, he would be reprocessed into duty as a fighter pilot… He presumed, as a member of his former flight, assigned to the F-4s.

  The forced leave time, he knew, was so that he would use it to find Lori. So, they could follow him to Lori and the others. They particularly wanted Gessel Kirban. How could he elude them? He had to find a way.

  But, how could he find the fugitives, when Cooper, with all the United States investigative services at his command, couldn’t find them? He looked at his sleeping father. The technology had done this to him. What was it all about? How had the brief time he had been involved with the PND helmet affected his own brain?

  His mother. He hadn’t thought of it. What would she do when she learned his father--her husband--was alive? Her first husband…

  His mother was strong. He would do all he could to make it easy on her. Remind her that Clark Lansing had been legally dead for more than 13 years. He would smooth the way, before explaining everything.

  They…Cooper…whoever was responsible had destroyed his family, when his Dad was…caught up in whatever happened.

  What had happened? How does a man just vanish from an airplane?

  So many troubling questions, things that he must find answers to, so he could put his life in order.

  Lori. The essence of everything he loved.

  He struggled to stay awake, but Lori’s loveliness was the last disintegrating image in his mind’s eye, while thoughts of her faded into restful sleep.

  Sharkton, Maine – June 25

  “These things, I do not know how else to say it. They mentally, physically, spiritually possess their host--their ‘victim’ is perhaps a more appropriate way to say it. For the ones possessed do not, I presume, invite these Dimensionals into their bodies, their souls.”

  Dr. Gessel Kirban spoke into the microphone of the large reel-to-reel recorder. He stopped and punched “replay,” making sure his notes were stated correctly.

  “Those things, what are they, Doctor?” The unfamiliar voice startled Kirban, who turned to see James Morgan, accompanied by his wife and daughter, standing at the entrance to the basement laboratory.

  Kirban placed the microphone on the table beside which he sat, got up and hurried to Morgan.

  “Your recovery is remarkable. No, it is phenomenal!” Kirban said, taking a penlight from a pocket of the smock he wore. He lifted James’ right eyelid and shined the light into the retina. He did the same to the other eye.

  “I hope you don’t mind,” the scientist said, after the fact. “Truly, truly remarkable!” he said, shaking his head.

  “There’s nothing magic about it, doctor,” Laura Morgan said, hugging her husband, and admiring him.

  “It’s an answer to my prayers,” she said with a bright smile, hugging him again.

  “I’m sure the good doctor has other thoughts, Super L,” James said.

  “Don’t be too sure, Colonel. These things are not of this world. And, I find it impossible to believe they, if physical, extraterrestrial creatures, could travel from such far distant worlds at sufficient speed to make this lonely planet feasibly accessible to them.”

  “What, then? What are they?” James asked.

  “Dimensionals. That’s how Gerhardt Frobe termed them. I believe these dark beings are interdimensional. They can pass from their plane of existence, to ours, apparently as they will.”

  “They are bene elohim--fallen angels,” Laura said, interrupting the scientist. “He--Dr. Frobe, or that thing possessing him, told us so.”

  “I just don’t know,” Kirban said, shrugging. “Whatever they are, they exist. Their form and materiality are foreign to anything we know. But they are real.”

  “I can’t remember anything,” James Morgan said, his tone laced with frustration. “Last thing I remember is doing a nosedive in the T-38. Next thing I knew, I was standing out there looking at the ocean.”

  “That thing inside Dr. Frobe said they wouldn’t fail this time. I believe they are the same as those beings that tried to invade the human race in antediluvian times--the time before Noah’s Flood. They’re the things Pastor Banyon has been preaching about,” Laura said.

  “Why? What would be their purpose?” Laura’s husband asked in a tone mixed with equal parts curiosity and skepticism.

  “Perhaps that’s a theological question that another must address,” the scientist said.

  “Rev. Banyon can tell us,” Laura said. “The Lord has been dealing with him on that very thing.”

  Christopher studied the page. He then thumbed through the following pages in rapid succession to find a Scripture for which he had been searching. But, his tired mind wasn’t really into his study this morning. Their final leg of the trip the day before from New York to San Marcos had seemed to last forever, and his fatigue made him irritable.

  Why hadn’t they got the telephone on line yet? He had tried to call from New York, from their stopover in St. Louis, and several times since, from the home of Randall and Ruth Prouse. The telephone at the Sharkton house was still not in service. He picked up the receiver from the phone on Prouse’s cluttered desk and dialed yet another time. He heard, like all the other times, the rapidly buzzing busy signal he recognized as different from the regular busy signal. The line was still not connected to his Aunt Annabel Lee Mitford’s old home.

  They should have gone directly from New York to Sharkton, he thought. But, their things were here, in storage at San Marcos. Susie must have her own things…

  “Any luck yet?” Randall Prouse asked, after opening his study door and poking his head through the opening.

  “Only bad luck, I’m afraid,” Christopher said, frustration in his voice. “I double checked to see that the new phone number that’s to be installed is right. The phone company assures me it is. But, it’s still not up and running.”

  “They’ll get it installed soon,” Prouse said. “Keep trying. It will be up and running at any second,” he encouraged.

  “I’m off to school for a couple of hours,” the archaeologist said. “Got to justify my expenses to the department head, you know?”

  When he closed the door to the study, Christopher bowed his head. Before he could begin his prayer, the
phone rang.

  He started to answer, but realized he wasn’t in his own home. There was a knock on the door, and Susie said, after opening it, “Ruth says there’s a call for you, Chris.” He lifted the receiver.

  “Hello?”

  “Rev. Banyon?”

  Laura Morgan! After several minutes of going over all that had happened during the past days, Laura said, “Dr. Kirban wants to speak with you. Do you know him?”

  “No…Only that he is Randy’s friend and colleague,” Christopher said.

  She introduced Kirban, then he was on the phone.

  “Reverend…”

  “Please, call me Chris,” the minister said.

  “Very well. Is Randall there?”

  “No. He had some business at the college where he teaches,” Banyon said.

  “Then I tell you…Chris…”

  The Israeli scientist paused, as if calculating the precise wording needed.

  “I am but a scientist, so do not understand things of theological import. I am convinced, Chris, that we are dealing, here, with something beyond my job qualifications.”

  “The dark beings?” Christopher asked, a chill running down his spine. “The things a former colleague of mine calls Dimensionals,” the Israeli said.

  “I agree, Dr. Kirban. These Dimensionals are beyond both of our job qualifications, as you say. But I know someone whose job description covers even these strange matters.”

  “I believe we are thinking in terms of the same authority,” the Israeli scientist said.

  “My wife and I will head up that way tomorrow morning. We can explore these things, together,” the minister said, his mind racing with questions.

  “There are certain procedures I would very much like to try in pursuing these matters,” Kirban said, his thoughts also running ahead to consider the possibilities.

  He had lied to the Marine Corps, something akin to sacrilege even within his own, personal economy of ethical behavior. To the Marine Corps, the lie was a court martial offense. But, he didn’t care. His government had used his father, had used him. Turnabout was fair play, and he would put them off the scent by any means possible, while he looked for Lori.

  They had used them both, and for that he couldn’t find within himself to trust any part of the government watchdogs, not even his much-beloved Marine Corps.

  What had they done with Lori? To her? What would they do with her? They had kept him from his father for 20 years; had allowed his mother to remarry, rather than divulge the truth that her husband was kept alive as part of some…what? What was it all about? They would be just as ruthless in dealing with Lori and the others who were with her. They were capable of anything…

  He must get answers. His gut told him the dream, or vision, or whatever it had been, pointed him in the direction he could go to find those answers.

  “Sharkton, Maine, Crab Cove Road is your salvation.” The remembered words were as clear now as when they first burned into his brain during the nightmare.

  He reported, as all Vietnam-eligible F-4 stateside pilots must, where he could be found during his leave time. He lied that he would be staying around Florida that surrounded Egland, mostly Destin and Pensacola, because his father couldn’t travel far from a military hospital in his condition.

  Mark looked at his Dad, who sat next to the big window of the aircraft equipped with pontoons for water landings. They had been given the ride with a friend, who asked no questions, and who, Mark knew, would say nothing of them hitching their way to Maine on his “air-boat,” as Greer Swenson called it.

  They had made the trip from Florida’s upper Gulf coast in a series of hops. Swenson delivered boat and ship parts to several locations along the East coast, and Boothbay, Maine, was the last port of call before he flew back to Florida.

  Mark had checked everything he could check, looking for any sort of tracking device. There were none. They were in the clear, and he looked forward to searching to see if there was, indeed, a Crab Cove Road in the tiny town called Sharkton.

  “I’ll be back in Boothbay in about a week,” the short man with a small frame said, offering Mark his right hand. “Check with the port master. I’ll have to file my flight plan to include putting in here. I should be back here in six or seven days…”

  “Can’t thank you enough, Swen,” Mark said, pumping his friend’s right hand in gratitude.

  “You just take care of your old man,” Swenson said, before thinking better of what he had said. “I’m sorry, Mr. Lansing. I mean take care of your Dad, Mark.”

  “You know I will,” Mark said, putting his arm around his father’s shoulder and giving him a hug. “We’ve got a lot of catching up to do, right, Dad?”

  Clark Lansing glanced nervously at his son, then at Swenson.

  “Soon,” he said, with a serious look of concentration that turned to one of frustration.

  “Soon,” Mark said, hugging his father again.

  “You take care, Mr. Lansing,” Swenson said. “Maybe I’ll see you this time next week.”

  They said their goodbyes, and parted ways, Mark gently leading his father by the arm toward the only place that looked like he might find answers to his questions about Sharkton.

  “Sir,” he said, finally getting the attention of the bait storeowner who had been talking and laughing with a few what looked to be commercial fishermen.

  “Yep? What can I do for ya?” the man asked, the broad smile he had for the fishermen’s stories melting into a more businesslike demeanor.

  “Can you tell me how to go about getting to Sharkton?” Mark asked.

  “Yep. About seven miles or so up that a way,” the man said in a thick Maine accent.

  “Is there a bus or something? Someone who might could take us there?”

  “Nope. Not that I’m aware. Nothin’ by land. You might make a deal with old Maddow, over there.”

  He pointed to a small, run down building across the dock. “He’ll do most anything for a dollar,” the man said.

  “What’s the name?” Mark said.

  “Maddow. Shad Maddow. Can’t miss him. He’s the one that looks like he’s been out to sea without a break for a month a Sundays.”

  “Thanks.”

  Mark gathered their bags and managed to hold his father’s arms with a part of his fingers not clutching a bag.

  They walked to the end of the pier, turned right, then right again on the other side of the water that divided “Shad’s Place” from the bait shop.

  Mark noticed several motor-boats, none in good condition, tethered to the wooden walkway that fronted the old, deteriorating building. Fish smells and other odors of the sea assaulted his nostrils when he entered. Several large barrels, rough-hewn wooden and wicker chairs and tables sat around the room on a plank floor covered partially with sawdust. Marlin and other big-game fish hung on the wall behind the counter, which was full of miscellaneous artificial baits and seafaring paraphernalia.

  An old man sat in an equally ancient chair made mostly of weathered wicker. He carved on a foot-long piece of wood, and didn’t look up, either when Mark and his father entered, or now, when Mark spoke.

  “Are you Shad Maddow?”

  “Who’s askin’?” the old man said, concentrating on the piece of wood.

  “My name’s Mark Lansing. This is my Dad. Clark Lansing.”

  “What you want?” the old man said from beneath the worn-out sea captain’s cap. His whiskers were white and looked to be at least two weeks’ worth.

  “We’re just in from Florida.” Mark said.

  “Whatcha want?” Maddow said gruffly, without looking up from his task.

  “We need a way to Sharkton. The guy over there in the bait shop said you might take us.”

  “How much?” the old man asked.

  “How much, what?” Mark said.

  “Money, son. Money.”

  “I thought you’d tell me.”

  “Take you there for twenty-five,” Maddow said,
then spit into the brass spittoon near his right foot.

  “Twenty-five dollars? Sounds fair,” Mark said.

  “Plus, gas. That’s another dollar seventy-five.”

  “It’s a deal. Can we go now?”

  The old man said nothing, but finally cut his ocean blue eyes at Mark. They projected something far more than an over-the-hill sailor running a dying business. This was a man who lived the way he pleased, and was happy, despite his surface anger.

  Maddow flung the knife 10 feet across the room. It stuck dead center in a 2-foot square surface of cork framed by gray 1-by-4-inch boards.

  Minutes later, the 1930s inboard runabout moved just off the coast, northward toward Sharkton. Mark wrapped a jacket he took from his duffel bag around his father’s shoulders. The wind was cool, almost biting, but the old seaman, in just a blue and white striped T-shirt and dungarees didn’t seem to notice, while his passengers shivered.

  “You know anything about Sharkton?” Mark said from the seat behind the empty seat beside Maddow.

  “What’s to know?” he said, a crusty edge to his question.

  “I’m looking for a place on Crab Cove Road. You know where that might be?”

  “Yep.”

  “Can you get us near there?”

  “I’ll take you into Crab Cove, herself, if that’s your druther,” the old man said, then spit his cud of chewing tobacco over the side.

  “Yep,” Mark said, a grin crossing his face.

  Thirty-three minutes later, the runabout chugged into the inlet, above which jutted rugged cliffs.

  The day was fading, and as the fleeting sun made its way eastward, long shadows engulfed Crab Cove and spread into the Atlantic.

  Shad Maddow pulled the boat beside a wooden dock that sat on large posts. The dock rested against the cliff’s sloping ridge that was cut with a pathway of man-made stone steps to the top.

  “Ain’t but one old place atop the bluff,” the old man shouted after mooring the boat to the dock with a rope. “Don’t think anybody lives there no more, not since the widow Mitford. Spooky old place.”

  The incoming tide was somewhat buffered by the inlet’s configuration, but the little craft rose and fell while Mark climbed onto the steps of the dock. He used all his strength to grab his father’s arms and hoist him onto the dock, timing the lift just right with the boat’s ascension upon the tide swell.“How far is it to Sharkton?” Mark asked, when he had stacked the bags and grabbed his father’s arm to steady him.