Plot Line (12 page)

“Nora, you go first, then Skeeter.”

“Then you, right, Dad?” Skeeter said.

“When you get outside, run next door to
Bill’s. Call the police.”

“You’re coming with us, right, Dad?”

“No.”

“Then I’m not going,” Skeeter said.

“Yes you are. We don’t have time to argue.”
Ray peeked out the window. A gun, a pistol, appeared in the
opening. Moonlight glinted off the gun. Ray staggered back. Nora
gasped loudly. A new sound: a loud crash and the noise of the
bedroom door slamming into the wall. Another crash followed by
several loud curses. Ray spun and interposed his body between the
bathroom door and his family. A figure, barely visible filled the
doorway. Nora directed the flashlight at the shadow. Ray saw the
face of Devlin Chambers.

“Hello, Ray,” he said. “I’m very sorry about
this.”

Two sharp pains stung his chest and Ray
raised his hands, clutching at the source of the injury. He felt
two small metal needles. A second later every nerve in his body
blazed. His body convulsed, his jaw clinched, his eyes rolled back,
and Ray collapsed to the tile floor of the bathroom.

The darkness deepened.

Thirteen

Nothing seemed right.
Ray felt displaced, confused, and groggy. His
muscles ached fiercely but he couldn’t remember why. A mental mist
swirled in his thinking like a thick, ubiquitous fog. He wanted to
open his eyes, but his lids were heavy, as if made of
concrete.

Ray licked his parched lips, but to little
benefit. His tongue was as dry as cotton. He took a deep breath.
The air was cool and stale. It was also familiar. Anxiety arose in
him like the surge of an unexpected tide.

Ray willed his eyes open.
Above him were white ceiling panels. Fluorescent lights shone from
their recessed fixtures. Turning his head to the right he saw a
partition and a bed. The bed was empty.
The infirmary
, Ray reasoned. He felt
ill. He was back in the New Mexico facility, lying in the same bed
he had been in a few weeks before.

Memories appeared in the haze that shrouded
his mind like ships sailing through a heavy ocean mist. At first
they came one by one: his nightmare, the glass of milk, the sound
at the front door. Then the dam broke flooding his thoughts with
the attack that had taken place in his home. The last thing he
remembered was hearing Devlin’s voice, a sharp pain, and then full
body agony.

“It’s about time you woke up,” someone said.
“I was getting worried.”

Ray struggled to sit up. “Where’s my family,
Devlin?”

“They’re fine. You’re wife and daughter woke
up about an hour ago. We sedated them like we sedated you. The less
they know the better.”

“I want to see them.” Ray swung his feet
over the edge of the bed. Dizziness swirled in his head and nausea
roiled in his stomach. He felt faint.

“Easy, buddy,” Devlin said as if he were
speaking to an old friend. “The anesthesia is wearing off, but
you’re in no condition to go running around.” He paused, and then
added, “Nor are you in any position to make demands. After all, you
brought this on yourself.”

“You attacked me.” Ray meant to shout, but
little more than a whisper passed his lips.

“Ray,” Devlin said in avuncular tones, “you
were unwise in talking about what you saw. You made a promise to me
and to your country to keep that knowledge to yourself. We can’t
have you compromising our work.”

“I had to talk to someone, I was going
insane.”

“No one said it would be easy, Ray.” Devlin
pulled a chair next to the bed, sat and crossed his legs. Ray
wanted to leap from the bed and strangle the man, but doubted he
could stand, let alone fight. “You received quite a shock. There
were some who said you should not be allowed to leave the facility.
The general was adamant about it, but I said you were trustworthy,
dependable. I said a man should be allowed to live with his family.
Besides, if you just up and disappeared, there would be questions,
maybe even an investigation. That wouldn’t do.”

“I spoke to a pastor. I spoke in confidence.
He probably thinks I’m crazy, anyway.”

“He believes you, I’m sure of it. He seems
to be a trusting man. You were very persuasive.”

“You listened to my private conversation.”
Ray had felt safe since his meeting with Shackleton took place
outside. Now he felt foolish for underestimating Devlin and the
others.

“Of course we did, Ray. If you’d been
thinking straight you would have known.”

“I wasn’t thinking straight. I wasn’t
sleeping. I was going mad.”

“You wouldn’t be the first, but you’ll do
all right.”

“Dr. Rehnquist didn’t do all right.”

Devlin nodded. “He worked with the aliens on
a daily basis. That took its toll. But he may have been unstable to
begin with. He had no family, no friends. All he did was work. He
had no emotional support. We would have helped but he became
paranoid and violent. Of course, I don’t need to tell you
that.”

“I want to see my wife and daughter.” The
dizziness was fading.

“You will . . . most likely.”

“Most likely?”

Devlin shrugged. “Everything depends on how
cooperative you are.”

“What do you want from me?”

“It’s not what
I
want. It’s what
they
want.”

“They?” A chill ran through Ray as if his
blood had been replaced with ice water.

“The aliens—except they’re not really aliens
as we think of them. Your friend Shackleton was right. These
creatures are not from another planet, but they are from another
world. Maybe I should say they’re from another universe, a world
that coexists with ours but is invisible to us.”

“Tartarus.”

Devlin shrugged. “That’s as good a name as
any, I suppose. It was a new term to me. I had to look it up. That
Shackleton is sharp. Of course, I don’t believe in demons, or any
of the other things he mentioned. Those are all just terms we
humans use to describe the indescribable.”

“Monster comes to mind.”

Devlin laughed. “I bet we look pretty ugly
to them. Anyway, their real, they’re powerful, and we’ve forged an
alliance with them. They can see things we can’t. They know things
we have yet to imagine. We think they’re going to be a big help to
our country.”

“Why do I feel like you’re striking a deal
with the devil?”

“Because you’re narrow-minded. You’re a
writer of fiction, Ray. You depend on your imagination to see what
few others can. All of that takes place in your mind. Now it can
take place in front of your eyes. You’re blessed.”

“Blessed?” Ray laughed. “I was nearly killed
because of you. I watched a man die; I was confronted by something
hideous; I’ve come close to losing my mind, my house is invaded in
the wee hours of the morning by armed men; and my family and I are
being held against our will. Forgive me, but I don’t see the
blessing.”

“Don’t be stupid, Ray,”
Devlin snapped. “You’re one of a handful of people who knows—I mean
really
knows
—we
are not alone in the universe. You have seen what others would give
their lives to see: Life other than our own. Think of it, Ray.
You’re on the inside of the greatest discovery in humankind.
Granted, you were never meant to see what you saw, but you did and
now you’re part of the elite.”

“How is this possible?”

“Serendipity,” Devlin explained. “You’re a
writer, you should know the meaning of the word.”

“It means to make a fortunate discovery by
accident. So what?”

“Some of the greatest discoveries have come
about by accident. Wilhelm Roentgen’s discovery of X-rays 1895 and
Alexander Fleming’s discovery of penicillin in 1928 are just two
examples. The same thing happened here. An ongoing research project
accidentally learned how to open a portal between the universe of
the aliens and our own. Don’t ask what the project was; just know
it involved a great deal of power to operate. The power and
magnetic field it caused created the portal.” Devlin shook his
head. “You think you were shocked when you saw the alien, you can
imagine what the researchers thought back then. It’s taken awhile
for us to create a stable portal.”

“You were one of the researchers?”

“No. I just oversee certain aspects of
research . . . about a dozen projects in all.”

“So you can see into their world.”

“No, not really. We can catch a glimpse here
and there. They see our world much better.”

“No one has crossed over?”

“They would love to do just that, but for
some reason they can’t. Not yet anyway. They’re helping us find a
way to make it happen.”

“For what reason? They’re evil. I can sense
it.”

“Evil?” Devlin crossed his legs. “They may
seem that way, but that will change as we get to know them.”

“Shackleton called them demons.”

“Shackleton is a religious nut. He
contextualizes everything from a biblical perspective. You’d expect
that from a minister, but not from a rational, educated man.”

Ray lowered his head in thought. He had
never spoken those exact words, but he was familiar with the
sentiment. He had been just as insensitive when Shackleton sat at
his dinner table. “I think Shackleton was right. If he is, then the
last thing you want is to have these creatures walking around on
our planet.”

“You’ve decided that, have you?” Devlin’s
tone turned cold. “You have one experience with them and you’re
ready to write them off as monsters.”

“One experience?” Ray’s voice turned to a
shout. “One experience? They.ve been in my head day and night for
weeks. They don’t go away. They plague me, haunt me, and torment
me.”

“I know it may seem that way—”

“It is that way! It is that way in point of
fact. They did it to Rehnquist, now they’re doing it to me. You may
be next.”

“You present a danger to them, just as
Rehnquist did. You saw what you weren’t supposed to see. You talked
about it when you should have kept your big mouth shut!” Devlin
stood. “I trusted you, Ray. I took you in when your publisher
dumped you like last weeks garbage. I gave you a job that pays more
than ninety percent of what the world makes. You betrayed me!”

Ray chose not to respond. There was nothing
he could say. No words, no amount of facts would persuade a man who
chose not to be persuaded. Devlin would believe what he wanted to
believe. Ray recognized the intellectual affliction; he suffered
with it all his life.

Moments flowed slowly. Finally, Devlin said,
“It’s time.”

“Time for what?”

“They want to see you.”

“What?”

“The aliens, they want to see you.”

Ray’s heart seized. “What for?”

“I didn’t ask. Get up. It’s time to go.”

Ray thought of resisting, but dismissed the
idea when Devlin called for the guards. Two men with thick arms
entered the sickbay. Ray slipped from the bed, momentarily dizzy,
then turned and faced the now open door.

“What about my family?”

“Do as you’re told and they get to go
home.”

“How do I know that’s true?”

Devlin shook his head. “You don’t.”

Fourteen

The lab was everything Ray
remembered
and seeing it brought back waves
of apprehension and fear. Some things, however, were different. The
cool cavern air felt cold and thick. A dark brown spot discolored
the floor where Rehnquist had fallen, mortally wounded by a bullet
fired from Devlin’s gun. There was an almost palpable somberness
among the few who occupied the lab with Ray. The general was there
as was the large woman Ray had crashed into when Rehnquist forced
him into the room.

The cavern seemed brighter, the fluorescent
lights humming and casting their muted glow to the area below.
There was equipment in the room, computer terminals, cables,
devices Ray couldn’t identify. Only one thing, however, held his
attention—the cylindrical waterfall that dominated the room. Water
poured from the ceiling above in a continuous sheet. It was unlike
any water, Ray had seen. Rainbow colors danced on the surface of
the falls. The water was thicker, not quite like oil, but more than
water. Two shadowy “some-things” stirred behind the translucent
curtain.

Ray’s heart seized in his chest and blood
rush from his head. Only fear for his family’s well-being kept him
standing. He took another tentative step forward. Devlin and the
others stood well back and watched in silence.

“What do they want?” Ray had asked as he and
Devlin walked down the corridors from the clinic to the lab.

“Hard to say. They don’t think the way we
do. Their values are different. Our communication has been limited.
We figure we understand about fifty percent of what they say.”

“That’s not much. Fifty percent
misunderstanding can lead to one hundred percent error.”

“It’s no different from Marco Polo talking
to the Chinese or Christopher Columbus’ communication with the
American Indian. It takes time, but it happens.”

“Except in those cases, it was human talking
to human. There was common ground in simple human experience such
as love, birth, death, and family. Can you say the same about the
creatures in the lab?”

Devlin sighed. “Let us do our job, Ray. You
just do as you’re told. Got it?”

They covered the rest of the distance in
silence. Now Ray stood less than half a meter away from a world he
could not have imagined just a few weeks ago.

He wanted to flee. Ray had no delusions of
heroics or courage. He stood before the portal because he had to.
He had no idea what Devlin had done with his wife and daughter. He
couldn’t be sure they were alive, but he had to take the
chance.