The team of three scientists, Grampy Joe among them, out of a sense of duty to their country, confided in the government and turned over the body of knowledge, which told of the prophecy. Before doing so, however, they secretly made copies of the work and hid them away. They also made a secret pact not to reveal the existence of the three identical objects that were passed to them by the alien.
In exchange for their patriotism the government swore the four men to secrecy and forced them into exile.
Danielle stopped reading. Her heart was pounding and her breathing had gone ragged. My God, she thought. So Roswell really did happen. The aliens did come here, but they didn’t crash. They were shot down, tortured and murdered by our own government. And the government had covered it up after all. She reached out and touched the object again, and as if to reaffirm that this was no dream, it immediately came to life, pulsing brightly in sync with her now pounding heartbeat. Visions of some terrible Armageddon whirled rampantly through her mind. And she suddenly knew that the visions were telling her the truth about mankind’s future. She pulled her hand back, not wanting to see anymore. Looking over her shoulder, she was suddenly sure that someone was watching her, feeling like a kid with her hand in the cookie jar. But there was nobody there. She’d become so rattled that she could not read any further. She quickly put the file back in the manila folder, wrapped the object in the soft chamois cloth and dropped that into her pocket.
Danielle immediately left Grampy Joe’s house, suddenly certain that she was being followed, that every car that came up behind her was filled with government assassins willing to kill any and all in order to obtain the miraculous items she now possessed. It was an irrational fear, of course. But then again, was it? She understood quite clearly that these were the things Grampy Joe had been murdered for and she was not about to take chances with her own life. She surmised that one of the three scientists—or perhaps one of their heirs—must have finally revealed the existence of the objects and now someone was trying to get their hands on them.
Although the object was wrapped in cloth and doubly insulated against her bare skin by the denim jeans that she wore, Danielle could still feel and see some of the prophetic visions that it inspired.
After several loops around town and a number of detours down side streets she ended up at the Suncoast Federal Credit Union near where she worked in downtown St. Petersburg. She left the car and carried the folder into the bank, all the while looking over her shoulder, certain that she was being followed. Once inside she rented a safe deposit box where she stored the file. Some irrational inspiration caused here to keep the object in her possession. She tried to make logical sense of what she’d read in Grampy Joe’s journal, but it was impossible to do so. There was no logic to be made of it. Her mind reeled with its implications. Some sort of plague was going to destroy humanity. When? Why? How? Would it be soon? Is that why Grampy Joe had been murdered? Did someone else know about this and were they trying to get at the file? Or were they after the miraculous object. Perhaps the three objects together had the power to prevent the catastrophe. Even as she was thinking these thoughts Danielle realized that the object was somehow influencing her entire being, mind and body.
Danielle would never in a million years have guessed that her grandfather could have been custodian to such a miraculous secret. Or that he had been one of only three recipients of some kind of … miracle from an alien species he called “The Gift.” Her mind was running wild with speculation as to what the gift could be. Was it the object she now carried in her pocket, or was it something else entirely? What did the symbols on the object mean? Was it some sort of language? A message? A warning? A map that would lead to the gift? Perhaps it was a small piece to an even larger puzzle? What ramifications might it all have for the fate of mankind, and what sort of terrible plague would besiege the planet in the future? And now that she was aware of it, what would be her role in all of this? Would she die because of that knowledge? Would she die in the forthcoming plague? Was it all just a fabrication made up by an imaginative old man? She realized she had to stop all this crazy speculation or go nuts.
The funeral was tomorrow and in two days she and Greg Hamel, her boyfriend, were scheduled to leave for Paris on vacation. Now everything had changed. No way could she go flying off to Paris. She needed to tell Greg about all this, and soon.
Greg was a heart surgeon who worked across the bay at Tampa General. They had met at a party two years ago, introduced by mutual friends. The chemistry had been immediate, but in time had dwindled to something less than inspiring. Greg was in Boston at this very moment attending a cardiology conference and he didn’t yet know about Grampy Joe’s murder. Everything had happened so fast that she had not had the time to call Greg and inform him. She knew he would be totally devastated. She’d call him tonight.
She would wait until after the funeral to begin the daunting task of deciding what to do with the bulk of Grampy Joe’s stuff. Some of his most personal things she would keep, of course, but her condo on Treasure Island could hold only so much. The rest of it she would have to decide, and then she would put the house up for sale. She had already decided that the proceeds would go to Grampy Joe’s favorite charities. She did not need the money and she knew that this was what the old man would have wanted. Thinking about all this caused her to break down in sobs of despair.
Danielle Peterson was an ambitious woman, intelligent and attractive, but most of all she was efficient, seeing to her own affairs, and in recent years to the affairs of her ailing grandfather with the sort of proficiency that never failed to simultaneously baffle and delight those who knew her, professionally and personally.
Danielle knew very little about her family. Her grandfather, who had raised her, avoided the subject like the plague. Now she knew why. Her parents had been killed in a plane crash in Nevada when she was five, she knew this much, and the old man had raised her to womanhood. She wondered now if her parent’s deaths had truly been an accident. She realized that she knew nothing of the details of the crash. Only what her grandfather had chosen to reveal. Grampy Joe had been very kind to her and very protective of her. He had seen to it that she got the best education, had gone to the finest schools, had a career that would surely sustain her for the rest of her life.
Danielle was a cancer research specialist at Bayfront Medical Center in St. Petersburg, choosing to work here for two reasons. It had one of the finest oncology units in the country and it was close enough to her grandfather so that they could have a continuing relationship.
Working with cancer patients was at once gratifying and frustrating for Danielle. She had chosen oncology because she had seen the disease as one of the greatest challenges of the future, and like any idealist, she was sure that given equal doses of hard work and talent, she could eventually make a difference.
So, when eighty-eight year old Grampy Joe had first been diagnosed with the disease, beginning in the prostate and quickly spreading into his skeletal and then his lymph system, Danielle had embarked on a one-woman crusade to save the man, to no avail. His condition had been terminal even before diagnosis, and the fact that she was powerless to save the only family member she had ever really known, a man she had loved unmercifully, had cut very deeply into Danielle’s faith in not only God, but in the very medicine she had studied and grown to depend upon. And now, what little there had been left of Grampy Joe’s life had been snatched from him so cruelly that Danielle was having trouble making sense of it.
The discovery of the file and the object was like an anti-climax to Joe’s life. If she’d only been made aware of it sooner, then perhaps she might have been able to save him.
But her intellect told her that nothing could have saved him. He was eighty-eight years old, for crying out loud. Even without the cancer how many years did he actually have left? So you’d better get moving, girl. If you die knowing the things you now know, then Grampy Joe’s life will have been lived in vain. Danielle stop
ped and took a deep breath. Where the hell had that voice come from?
In truth, Danielle did not have a wit of an idea what she should do. If the things written in the file were true—a forthcoming plague—then she must confide in someone who could translate what it all meant. But Grampy Joe’s warning against such an act had been very clear. If it was fiction then Grampy Joe had been a deeply troubled individual. But the object, which was communicating with her at this very moment, was reaffirming in an emphatic voice what she already knew: Grampy Joe was not a storyteller.
That very night, restless and troubled, she called Greg at his hotel in Boston to confide in him.
It was late and she knew that she would probably wake him, but she could not sleep and her mind would not let her rest.
“Greg,” she said, when she had him on the line. “Grampy Joe’s dead.” She thought she would be able to hold onto her composure, but she was wrong. Just saying the words caused her to break down in heavy sobs.
“I’m so sorry, Danielle,” Greg said with concern but there was no surprise in his voice. Of course there wouldn’t be. He’d known about Joe’s condition and realized, as did Danielle, that it was only a matter of time. The man was eighty-eight years old. He wasn’t going to live forever. “Are you okay, Danielle?”
“No, I’m not okay,” she said after a few moments of getting herself together. “He was murdered.”
“What? Oh my god! When, Danielle?”
“Day before yesterday.”
“Wait a minute. Why didn’t you call me?”
“I’m calling you now.”
“Danielle, he died two days ago!”
“I knew how important that conference was to you and I didn’t think you needed any distractions.”
“Distractions? Danielle. Your grandfather was murdered. I’m catching the next available flight home. When’s the funeral?”
“Tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow! Jesus Christ! Were you just going to bury him without even telling me? I don’t believe you.”
“I’m really confused right now, Greg. This whole thing has taken the wind out of my sails … I … I can’t even think straight. I need some … Greg … there’s something else. Something I need to talk to you about.”
“Danielle?” There was apprehension in Greg’s voice. “Are you giving me the brush off?”
Up until the moment Greg said the words Danielle had not even considered such a thing. She had intended to tell him about her discovery, but in that instant something terrible flashed in her mind. It was an image of Greg with another woman lying beside him, someone evil and manipulative. It was an image like none she had ever before experienced, so real that her mind spun and she was suddenly sure that it was true. She had never been the precognitive type, choosing instead to live her life in the here and now. Danielle was a fierce pragmatist. Her medical training had given her that much, so, this sudden flash of precognition took her completely by surprise. Greg and she had been together for almost two years now and she supposed they were happy. But were they really? Was Greg? Now that it was said, an overwhelming flood of relief washed over Danielle, so strong that she could not rationalize it. And it was accompanied by a deep feeling of guilt and regret. Danielle knew right then and there that she and Greg were over. She was not sure if the flash of him with that evil, manipulative woman was something that had already taken place or something that would occur in the future, or something that was occurring right at this very moment. No matter. Danielle was irrevocably sure that it was real, and strangely she felt no jealousy or anger towards him. And she knew that she could never tell him about what she’d found at her grandfather’s house.
“Greg,” she said. “I just need some time, that’s all. I’ve decided not to go to Paris with you next week. I just can’t. Now with Joe gone there’s so much that has to be done. I’ve got to decide what to do with his house and take care of what’s left of his things.”
“Danielle, what’s going on here? Why are you doing this?” She heard the shock in Greg’s voice, but at the same time she thought she sensed a certain tone of relief.
“Greg, please, I’m totally exhausted and I don’t think I’d make a very good adversary tonight.” She was crying again, sniffling into the phone. “I’ll talk to you when you get back from the conference.”
That was that. She hung the phone up feeling just as stunned as she knew Greg must feel. She could not stop crying. She went to bed, placing the object beneath the pillow. She buried her head deep down into the pillow’s downy softness, her body wracked with deep, convulsive sobs. She had never in her life felt so alone, so lost and confused, and at the same time so filled with a strange feeling of hope.
For the rest of that long night Danielle tossed in her bed, soaking the sheets, even though the air conditioning was laboring hard to combat the stifling south Florida summer heat. When she slept she dreamed of a new lover, and the revelation overwhelmed her. Rarely did she have sexual dreams. But the dream she was experiencing now was so real, so overpowering that it triggered a series of orgasms that were so intense she came awake, her body quaking, her respiration ragged. The man she had dreamed of was strong and tall, handsome and brave, kind, gentle and intelligent. All of the things Danielle knew from experience were virtually impossible to find in any one man. She lay back down with a sigh and thought about her dream lover, a man she would fight alongside of in a battle between good and evil. A man she would go with on a quest to find a special child that had the power to save humanity. Had she really dreamt all that? She had to laugh at the absurdity of it. Nevertheless, she had. There was no denying it. The thought of it sent gentle shivers up and down her spine and a renewed flood of hot blood coursing through her veins to her sex. She had never before considered a life other than what she had now. Her life had been a series of career choices, school, a long internship at Columbia Presbyterian in New York and finally her residency here at Bayfront Medical Center. But now, suddenly, she was thinking about things she had no right to even consider. She had responsibilities here, friends, patients and colleagues who depended on her. And now everything had changed, and she knew in her soul that the changes were more than about losing her grandfather. With the discovery of the object, her world had changed in ways she never could have envisioned. She knew also, instinctively, that the person she had dreamt about was real, that he was waiting out there somewhere for her to find him and Danielle knew somehow that she would. Suddenly anything seemed possible.
She lay awake thinking until almost dawn, and in time she slept again, and again she dreamed of her new lover. The passion she felt in the dream was so real that she awoke weeping several more times, a desperate yearning for an unknown man in her heart, only to fall asleep again, back in the middle of the wonderful dream. She and her new dream lover were stepping into a shaft of the most beautiful blue light she had ever seen. And then they were floating through space and time. Then they were in a place unlike any she had ever imagined. They were walking hand in hand through endless meadows of amber colored grass. It was a place of craggy snow-capped mountains, of fast running rivers, of bottomless canyons and crimson deserts, a place where three inconceivable and totally different suns burned in a sapphire blue sky. She had never felt so happy, so full of purpose, so alive, and the thought of losing it, the thought of never dreaming the dream again sent her plunging into a pit of deep depression. She understood, of course, where the inspiration was coming from. In the night she had unconsciously reached beneath the pillow and had cupped the magic object in her palm. Danielle could feel its magic, both the good and the bad, even in her sleep, the roadmap to her future.
Trust the object, it will show you the way.
It was the ultimate gift from Grampy Joe.
In Boston Greg Hamel hung up the phone, rolled over and put his arm around the beautiful dark-haired woman who shared his bed.
“It’s over, isn’t it?” the woman said.
“Just like that,” Hamel
replied, a little stunned. “I can’t believe it. Everything was going so well.”
“What did she find in her grandfather’s house?”
“What? Nothing.”
“Bullshit! Did she say anything about an object?”
“Object?” Hamel said, looking stupidly at the woman, his eyes rheumy, his speech slightly slurred. “No.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“I’m not lying. What object?”
“An object that holds the secret to immortality, you fucking idiot!”
“Oh sure, Angelica. I think there were at least a dozen of them. One in every room. What the hell are you talking about?”
“Oh, never mind,” Angelica said. “She has it. I can sense it. And I’ll get it from her. You can count on it.”
“How do you know she has this … object?” Hamel asked. “And why is it so damned important, anyway?” Hamel had met Angelica in the hotel bar on the first night of his cardiology conference and had shared every night with her since. She was beautiful and alluring and he’d been powerless to resist her. She’d somehow gotten into his mind and had remained there like a parasite, extracting from him everything he knew about Danielle, her grandfather and their associations. Greg did not care. He was lost.
“There are always ways,” Angelica mused softly, ignoring Hamel’s question. “Screwing you proved to be a futile and unsatisfying exercise.”
Dr. Greg Hamel just nodded as the beautiful Angelica mounted him. “But I don’t suppose one more time will hurt anyone. Not me at least. How many tablets of Viagra did you eat?”
“All of them,” Hamel replied, the grin steadfast on his florid visage.
“Good boy,” Angelica said, grinning rapaciously. “You must always do what Angelica tells you to do.” She threw her head back and began riding him like a bucking bronco, hooting and hollering as she did so.
The Haunting of Sam Cabot (A Supernatural Thriller) Page 17
