The Lunatics is a complete short novel posted on this blog for you to read for free. It is about a coup d'état carried out by strange beings that got blended into the human population and went by unnoticed. One day, out of the blue, they took over the seat of power and everything changes. It might happen in the future and could be part of our history. The novella was written by Carlos B. Camacho, who sometimes writes under the pen name 'Carl Wayne'. If you enjoy reading it, please buy me a cup of coffee by clicking the blue button at the end, or on the right hand side (if you are using a PC).
The Lunatics Carlos B. Camacho
Chapter I
During a science class at a primary school in Denver, Colorado, Mrs Parker explained essential facts about the moon to her students.
"The moon is a celestial body in our solar system, which is in the Milky Way. With a mass and gravity inferior to that of the Earth, it is a natural satellite of our planet. It moves around the Earth in the same way our planet moves around the local star, the sun. It exerts strong gravitational influence on our oceans and seas, being responsible for the tides and the deep ocean currents. It has been up there in space, as the universe mysterious gift to Earth, for three and a half billion years. Having no gaseous atmosphere, it is dry, barren, and lifeless," the primary teacher explained to the class.
"Lifeless? Is it really lifeless?" Allan asked.
"Yes, of course. It's a dead and barren sphere. There's no oxygen and nitrogen, nor any other type of gas in the form of an atmospheric layer wrapping it up," the teacher said.
"Why does the moon look like that, with those round things all over it?" Alice inquired, pointing, with her forefinger, to the big photo of the natural satellite that hung on one of the classroom walls.
"Those round things are craters, which are huge dents left in the moon surface by falling meteoroids and asteroids over millions of years. Remember, the moon has no atmosphere to protect its surface from falling objects. This is the reason it has a pockmarked surface like that," the teacher said.
"What about inside? I mean, what is there deep inside it?" Allan queried.
"What is there inside the moon? There is only solid rock, which once used to be molten stone, which solidified over millions of years," the teacher answered.
"How do NASA guys know for sure it's solid rock, when nobody has ever drilled a hole deep enough to see it's only rock?" Tom questioned.
"What if some of the craters are so deep that go all the way down into its core?" Lucas asked.
"The moon isn’t a French cheese wheel, Lucas," another student said, chuckling, with the whole class guffawing in the background.
"If there were living beings on the moon, what should they be called?" Lucy asked.
"Well, since the Latin word for moon is 'luna', I would call them 'lunatics'," the teacher said, to the class, who began rolling in the aisles.
"Yeah, in that case, the NASA will need a whole army of shrinks armed with tranquilizers," Tom said, laughing.
“Pipe down, please; pipe down! It’s not recess yet. You’re still in class! You, Leo, do you have any question?” The teacher asked, staring at the small, frail-looking student, who had just raised his hand.
“During the full moon, I get agitated, and sometimes I have seizures. That’s what my mother says,” Leo said, looking at the teacher and then at the ceiling, rolling his eyes, with the rest of his classmates guffawing thunderously.
Leo Jansson was a different kind of student. Although he was intelligent, when it came to learning information, and had an excellent memory, he had a strange personality. He could hardly relate to his peers and establish friendship. He was aloof and detached from his classmates. The reason for this was that he was partially autistic and he once even said to his mother he had visions and heard voices, especially during full moon.
When people talked to him, he would not answer them right away as it was as if he was always wrapped up in thoughts, living in his own world. However, he was very intelligent, imaginative, and endowed with a sixth sense. He had an insight into everything, but he was not able or he simply did not want to express his visions to people. He remained silent as he gazed at them in their eyes.
Leo had not always been like that. He had been an ordinary boy until the age of 8. He had changed overnight during a week-end he had spent, with his parents and siblings, in the countryside near the Rocky mountains. The Janssons had a cabin not far away from the city. Coincidentally, it was full moon that Summer night. It was very warm and they had decided to sleep outside on their cots in the backyard to see the stars and talk for a while.
“Dad, what are all those stars over there, to the left?” Leo’s little sister had asked.
“They’re millions of suns, with their planets and moons. They’re part of the Milky Way,” Leo’s father had said.
“Dad, what did Neil Armstrong find on our moon?” Leo had inquired.
“Only rocks and craters. The astronauts didn’t find anything else; no water, no living creatures. The moon is only a ball of rock,” his father had said.
“But are there living beings out there in outer space?” Leo had asked.
“Probably. There are billions of stars. So there are billions of solar systems, with their own planets,” his father had said.
“All right kids, give your father a break. We’re tired and we want to sleep,” his mother had said.
That night, Leo had stayed awake for a while, looking up at the bluish, black dome of the night sky above. He loved to gaze at the stars and constellations. However, it had always been the moon he had really been intrigued by, and that night it was full moon. So, he had not really been able to see clearly all the stars located nearby the Earth’s satellite; only the others on the opposite half of the dome could be seen clearly, but even then they were outshone by the large white orb that follows our planet.
‘What about the dark side of the moon? No one has ever explored that dark region,’ he had thought, gazing at the Earth’s satellite. ‘I wish I had a big professional telescope to study each one of the craters that can be seen,’ he had said, naively, to himself, like the child he had been.
Stretching out his arm, pretending he could touch the surface of the moon with his hand, Leo had heard a strange buzzing noise as he had fleetingly seen something flare up out of the corner of his eye. It appeared to have come from the left sector of the sky, away from the moon. Turning his head to see what it was, he noticed a big and very bright star that had not been there a few minutes before and he was gazing at it right then in awe.
Leo had strained his eyes to guess how far it was. First, it had appeared to be far away in outer space but then, all of a sudden, it seemed it had gotten much closer, within the Earth’s atmosphere. As he looked at it intently, it had suddenly moved sideways at a lightning speed. As it had considerably increased in size, he had become aware that the strange UFO was really much closer to him now, maybe eight hundred yards above. He had tried to call his mum and dad, but his voice had become frozen with astonishment and fear.
At that moment, he had clearly noticed a luminous, bluish halo-like circle around the central spherical light, which was the size of a large balloon. Then, all of a sudden, a smaller bright orb had come out of it. And this smaller sphere had released an even smaller one, and then another one, as they all had hovered above in midair, with the smallest one hanging very close right above him.
The last ball to spring out had been only the size of a toy marble. Then this small, glowing sphere had swooped down out of the sky and sailed through the night air towards him. Leo’s eyes had popped with amazement and awe at the sight of the approaching small gleaming orb. Just as it came closer to him, a miniature, bluish sparkling ball had been released from the marble-size sphere. This tiny round spark had remained in midair for a few seconds, hovering steadily very close to his head. Then it had begun vibrating with a weird metallic buzz before it had gotten into Leo’s brain through his temple.
As soon as it had popped into his head, Leo had suddenly become dizzy. Then he had seen the vault of the night sky turn around and around, with the full moon and the stars spinning like a celestial merry-go-round. He had gotten sick. He had turned his head to look at his mother and ask for help. But not a single word had come out of his mouth. Only a croak-like sound had torn out of his throat.
He had tried to get up and walk towards his father, but he had not been able to move. He had become paralyzed by this intense and strange quiver which sprang from the tiny sphere that had gotten into his head. Waves after waves of tremors had shot throughout his body, which had begun to shake wildly. Then the tremors had stopped altogether and he had started to levitate in the horizontal position.
He had risen higher and higher over the cabin roof, and over the tree tops he went up. He had approached the mother sphere that hovered in the sky over the forest near the Rocky Mountain Range foothills. He had been cold and begun to shiver; the air had been nippy. Having gone past the bluish halo, he had been swallowed by the huge matrix orb, which shone brighter than the full moon lying on the other side of the heavenly dome.
As soon as he had gotten into the main sphere, he had been plunged into utter darkness. Cocooned inside the ball, he had no longer been afraid and anguished as his fears had been allayed and his soul soothed by celestial, harmonic sounds. Then he had fallen asleep as he spun around inside in a slow vortex. He had dreamed strange visions and seen strange creatures but he had not been afraid, for he felt contained and protected.
A few hours had gone by when, all of a sudden, he had woken up and found himself back on his cot. Just as he had opened up his eyes, he saw the mother sphere soar up high into the stratosphere. Then it had become a tiny point of light and disappeared into outer space. The moon had gone, too, and he had remained awake for the rest of the night, wondering what it had all been about.
The next day, Leo had told his parents about what he had seen, about the celestial spheres, with the bluish halos, and about what he had experienced. But they had not believed him. They had brushed aside their son’s UFO accounts as a child’s dream. And his little sister and brother had just laughed at him, telling him he was just going lunatic for watching the moon for too long.
From that day on, he had slowly begun to change as he became aloof, not being able to socialize; and sometimes at night he would shiver and shake for a while before being able to go to sleep. However, his memory and intelligence would improve sharply, to the point to have a much higher IQ than his peers. He would also acquire deep insight and intuition. But he had also begun to hear the voices and have the visions.
He did not know where they came from. They would just whisper things not into his ears but into his mind. They would tell him about people’s secrets and about what would happen in the future, like major political events. It was precisely this strange psychic phenomenon that had started to worry his parents. Because they did not believe their son’s account of the voices and that they could foretell the future, they just thought that it was some psychiatric disorder their son was having.
Leo’s mother had him seen and checked by several professional specialists, such as a neurologist, a psychologist, and a psychiatrist. The neurologist had not found anything wrong with his auditory capacity and his brain temporal and occipital lobe. The psychologist had said that, although he was a bright boy, he suffered from slight emotional retardation. The shrink, on the other hand, had said he could not account for the voices Leo heard nor for his ‘visions’ as the Rorschach test and other types of examination had not shown any sign of schizophrenia.
“Your son has a high IQ, above average, and I don’t see signs of psychosis. He has a strange personality, though, but he seems to be a normal boy to me. Don’t worry Mrs Jansson, the ‘voices’ symptom will wear off as he grows up into his teens. Maybe it has something to do with a slow development of his brain temporal lobe internal wiring,” the psychiatrist had said.
Despite the psychiatrist’s opinion, the years had gone by and Leo had never stopped hearing the whispering voices and seeing the visions, as he kept getting agitated, with or without seizures, on full moon. However, as he became socially aware of what it implied telling other people that he heard voices, he had utterly stopped telling them so by the time he had turned fifteen years old. He had not wanted them to think he was some kind of a freak. Thus, he had decided to keep his sensory experiences to himself.
Chapter II
By the time Leo had turned nineteen years old, he had already opened up to his peers as he had become able to socialize and make friends, though his social circle was reduced. At that age, he was already a freshman at Colorado State University, in Fort Collins. There, he met his girlfriend, Diane, who was a bright student, too.
They both studied physics and astronomy and they enjoyed spending week-end nights together gazing at the stars, with the large optical telescope his father had given him for his birthday. At the end of the first academic year, Leo and Diane and four of their classmates had decided to go on a camping trip to the Rocky Mountains for six days. As a matter of fact, it was Leo’s idea to visit that particular place; he said it was a perfect spot to observe the stars at night.
They left early in the morning from Diane’s home. It was the third week of June, the weather was perfect; sunny days, with clear blue skies, and starry nights. They had driven for more than two hours, when they arrived in Junction City, a small countryside town. They stopped there to gas up Sean’s van and to have a snack at a small cafe. Aside from being their classmates, Sean, Laura, Peter and Mathew were also their close friends.
“Do you reckon we have enough food?” Peter asked.
“Yeah, I think so,” Leo said.
“What we have should tide us over until next week. We’ve got canned food. You know, tuna fish, corned beef, bacon, stuff like that. There are also beef steaks, hamburgers, chickens, eggs, ham, cheese, rice, bread, crackers, and nuts,” Diane said.
“Yeah. There’s also mineral water, soda, and beer,” Leo added.
Having eaten their scrambled eggs and sandwich and drunk their coffee, they got in the van and took off. As he drove along the town main boulevard, Sean put some music on. Everybody seemed to be happy as they talked to one another, with rock songs in the background. Then Sean saw a street sign above the road and turned right, heading westward, in the direction of the Rocky Mountains.
“Look! The bloody Rockies right ahead, in front of us!” Sean said. He was a British student studying in Colorado through an scholarship.
“Wow! It looks gorgeous!” Laura said.
“Yes, indeed. I’ve seen this kind of landscape only once before, when I visited Peru, with my folks,” Mathew said.
“Yeah, in the morning, when the sun shines on top of the snow-capped mountains from the east, the Rocky looks impressive,” Diane said.
“Yeah, you said it; ‘in the morning’, this time of day. But at dusk, when the sun has set, the Rocky Mountains are a dark, looming and jagged-edged silhouette that strings out in a long row,” Leo said.
“Yeah, everything is relative, not absolute. The look of things depends on the time of day and where you’re standing,” Sean said.
“Yeah, like the moon. Most people, when they see the moon, they only look at the bright side, but they forget about the dark side,” Leo said.
“Next Sunday is full moon!” Peter said, smiling.
“Yeah, I know it. I always know when it’s full moon,” Leo said.
They had driven 15 miles when they saw the Rocky Mountain foothills far ahead. First the tree-covered elevations looked blue in the distance, but as they got closer they began to take on the dark green color of conifers. All that area was part of the local National Park.
The macadam road became a narrow dirt lane as the open cattle grassland gave way to the forest. They wound their way through tall trees as they drove, talking and laughing. Then the country road straightened out and they saw a big house sitting in the middle of a large grassy clearing, up ahead on their right.
“That must be it; that house over there,” Diane said, pointing at a big cottage in the distance.
“It’s gorgeous!” Laura said.
Sean saw a wooden gate, turned right, and pulled up in front. Leo got out of the car and went over to the entrance. He pushed his hand through the rails, pulled the bolt sideways, and opened the gate. Then Sean drove into the large grassy yard and stopped in front the big gable-roof cottage. They got out and took their backpacks and bags out of the van. Leo opened the front door and they all went inside.
“Wow! This is a nice place you rented,” Laura said, to Leo.
“Yeah, my mother rented it for us, as a matter of fact,” he said.
“The owner has another cottage for rent not far from here,” Diane said.
“Look! We’ve got excellent internet signal here,” Peter said, showing his cellphone screen to Laura.
Although the kitchen had a rather cramped space to move about, with a small table, the dining and living room area was an ample rectangle, with a fireplace in one corner and a large front window. There was a long table, with six chairs, a couch, a sofa, an old leather armchair, and an old tube TV set. They sat down to get organized, while Diane got busy putting the food and drink in the refrigerator.
“It’s damp and musty in here,” Laura said.
“Let me open the windows to air the house,” Leo said, pulling the sashes wide open.
“Where do we sleep tonight?” Sean asked.
“Upstairs. Let me show you to your to bedroom,” Leo said.
Leo grabbed a bunch of keys from the coffee table and went up the stairs, followed by the rest of the guys, except Diane who stayed downstairs to make coffee. After they have left their belongings in their bedrooms, they all came down and sat around the dining room table. Sean and Mathew each had a map of the local forest, with all the paths, creeks, clearings, and lookout spots well marked.
“Do you know how we get to this clearing here? It’s marked with number 5,” Sean said, pointing his forefinger at a point on the map.
“Let me see. Look; we have to take this path that winds through the trees here,” Leo said.
“That’s not a long walk. We can do it today and come back before the sun sets,” Mathew said.
“Yeah, that’s sound like a good idea,” Laura said, grabbing her cup of coffee which Diane had just set on the table.
After they drank their cup of coffee, they got into the van and drove off in the direction of the nearest hills. As they went, they drove by another grassy plot of land with a cabin standing in the middle. Then there was the thick woods, where the country lane became narrower at every bend. The girls were busy prattling about a Netflix series, while the guys chattered about the past football game in Colorado. But Leo was silent. He thought, with a deep frown on his face. Something seemed to be worrying him. After a bump and a shaking bounce the road straightened out and it ended in a wide circular parking space.
“There, we are. This is the end. We gotta get out,” Sean said, opening the driver’s door.
“Are you OK? You don’t look like you’re having fun,” Diane said, in a low voice, into Leo’s ear, as she came up close to him.
“Yeah, but, for some strange reason, I feel worried about something I cannot account for,” Leo said.
“The three trails begins here. Look at the signs! They’re numbered. Which one should we take?” Mathew asked.
“The shortest one, I guess. It’s already ten past three and we should be back before the sun sets,” Laura said.
“Then, path number 1,” Leo said, looking at his map.
They walked through the narrow gate in a single file, making their way into the forest. The path was not rough; a regular trail that rose and fell gently as they moved across the slope of the first foothill, which was only about 950 feet high. Different kind of trees and shrubs lined the way. They walked briskly, telling stories about past hiking experience in other places. They were talkative except Leo, who walked behind Diane.
They had marched for about two and a half miles when the trail snaked into a small ravine between two low hills. At the end of the narrow hollow, as they walked out of it, the hill sides suddenly opened up and they found themselves in a grassy clearing surrounded by tall aspens and cottonwood trees. Much to their surprise, they saw a strange tall monolith right there, in the middle of the glade. They had not expected to see it, because it was not mentioned in their guidebooks.
“Wow! Look at that!” Peter said, pointing at the unusual rectangular structure.
There was a young couple who had just arrived a few minutes before. They were taking pictures of it, gazing at it in astonishment.
“Hi! Do you know anything about it?” Sean asked.
“All I know is that it’s not supposed to be here. In my guide, the author doesn’t say anything about monoliths in these parts,” the young man said.
“Yeah, it’s not marked on my map, either,” Diane said.
“Look! There is no grass around it, and the earth is loose,” Laura said.
“Yes, it looks as if it had just been set up,” Sean said, in his British accent.
“Wow! It’s so smooth and you can see through!” Diane said, running her hand over its glossy surface.
The menhir was a fourteen-foot tall, rectangular slab, about five inches in thickness. But what made it strange was the fact that it was thoroughly transparent, like glass, with an extremely smooth surface. Two vertical veins of what looked like milky-white quartz ran parallel from top to bottom, disappearing below the ground. Gazing at it intently, Leo heard the voices again; ‘they’re coming, they’re coming’, they whispered from a corner of his mind.
“Who do you reckon planted it here?” Peter asked, taking a picture of it, with his cellphone.
“I don’t know. Maybe people from the National Park did it, I guess. You’ll find two more crystal monoliths if you hike the other trails. By the way, my name is Brian, and she’s Olivia, my girlfriend,” one of the young couple said.
“It’s nice to meet you. I’m Leo. She is my girlfriend Diane, and they’re my friends, Laura, Sean, Peter, and Mathew,” he said.
“Tomorrow, we can start off early in the morning, so we have time to see the other quartz slabs,” Laura said.
The sun had climbed down the dome of the sky and was now sinking out of sight behind the mountains when they went back to the house. Everybody went inside, except Leo, who lingered on the porch, looking at the waxing gibbous moon that rose in the east. He felt uneasy as he wore an anxious expression on his thin face. He did not know why. He did not feel like that since his childhood experience with the outer space spheres that night in the country side. Also, he heard the voices again that afternoon, but this time they had an ominous message; ‘they’re coming; they are not far from Earth,’ they said.
“Come on, Leo. Get inside. Dinner is ready,” Diane said.
That evening, the first evening, they had steaks, with rice. Some drank beer, others soda and mineral water. They talked over dinner and bantered friendly. Peter and Mathew were the only ones that smoked, but the rest did not seem to mind and put up with the thin bluish mist of burned tobacco hanging over the dining room table. Although they were young, just out of their teenage, they were already poised and levelheaded people.
“Hey! Look at the moon! So crisp and sharp and big! What a night!” Laura said, as she looked out of the window at the Summer night sky.
“Yeah, but it’s not full moon yet. It’s the day after tomorrow,” Sean said.
“Tomorrow evening, I’m gonna set up the telescope outside. It’s always better to gaze at the moon and stars from the countryside areas than from the city,” Leo said.
“Hey, what about watching a horror movie. I’ve got about ten movies in a flash drive,” Laura said.
“I’ve got a better idea! What about summoning the spirits. I brought my Ouija board! This is the ideal spot. It’s very quiet and peaceful here. We’re away from the bustle and noise of the city,” Peter said, smiling, with a twinkle in his eyes.
“I don’t believe much in that stuff, but let’s do it for fun and see if it really works,” Sean said.
“Yeah, let’s see what comes out of it,” Mathew said.
“What about a cup of coffee?” Diane offered.
“Yeah, that sounds like a good idea,” Laura said.
“I’ll have a shot of whiskey,” Mathew said, pulling out a flask of liquor from his jacket pocket.
While Diane made coffee in the kitchen, Peter went upstairs to bring down his Ouija paraphernalia. Mathew tilted the flask of whiskey and took a swig. Then he screwed the cap back on. The guys talked boisterously to one another, braying with laughter at some joke. However, Leo remained quiet; he had a worried expression on his face.
As Peter came back and laid out the Ouija board and pointer at the center of the table, Diane brought a tray, with cups full of coffee, and set it on the table near the Ouija board.
“All right! How does this game start?” Sean said.
“It’s not a game. It’s something very serious. It’s a session of contact with the realm of spirits,” Peter said.
“How do we summon them into this dimension?” Laura asked.
“Everyone, or at least three people, must put their fingers on the planchette, or pointer, and you must summon a deceased person, somebody you know, maybe a relative. Then the planchette slides across the board, pointing each one of the alphabet letters to form words or the number below, or ‘yes’ or ‘no’ answers if you ask categorical questions,” Peter said.
“When the pointer starts moving, making up words, does it mean that the spirit of that particular person actually comes into this world?” Diane asked.
“Not always. Sometimes it’s the spirit of somebody else who pretends to be your relative. And sometimes, it’s a dark entity,” Peter explained.
“A dark entity? You mean an evil spirit?” Diane asked.
“Yes, and also evil forces from somewhere might show up. By ‘evil forces’ I mean powerful unknown entities that have never been incarnated in a human body or in any other earthly organism,” he said.
“What about good forces instead of evil ones? Just because they’re unknown it doesn’t mean they’re all evil,” Leo said.
“I guess you’re right. We always have a prejudice against all those who aren’t known. We’re afraid of the unknown because they’re unpredictable,” Sean said.
“What do you mean by ‘unpredictable’?” Mathew asked.
“When somebody’s patterns of behavior and reaction can’t be foreseen and figured out. I mean, when there’s no certainty what their doings are gonna be like, positive or negative, in relation to our safety,” Laura said, taking another sip of coffee.
All right! Let’s start the session then. It’s getting interesting,” Sean said, with a smirk of disbelieve.
Everybody sat around the table. Mathew took another swig of whiskey and put the flask back in his pocket, while Sean and Diane drank the remainder of their coffee, putting the cup back on the plate on the table. Peter took a final drag on his cigarette and then stubbed it out on a small porcelain ashtray.
“All right folks. I’ll put my forefinger on top of the planchette. I need two guys to do the same thing,” Peter said.
Mathew and Laura followed suit, putting the tip of their forefingers on top of the planchette. No one talked. They just waited for something to happen. It was quiet; only the barking of a dog somewhere outside could be heard. They looked at each other and then down at the pointer and waited expectantly. Time stretched and became taught. Sean suddenly broke the silence by impatiently drumming his fingers on the table top.
“What are you doing?” Peter asked, peevishly.
“This is silly. There’s no such thing as the afterlife, or the spirit world,” Sean said.
“Shut up, Sean, and wait,” Laura said.
“Maybe we need another one to put their fingertip on top and concentrate. It seems that none of us is a medium,” Peter said.
“OK, I’ll do it,” Leo said, stretching his arm and setting his forefinger on top of the Ouija board pointer.
“Is there anybody out there?” Peter asked, solemnly, hoping that some entity would show up.
Once again, they waited. Time went by as seconds ticked away on the face of the kitchen clock. Silence dropped like a pall of invisible fog that pervaded the whole house. The stillness was broken only by their breathing and heartbeat. Losing patience, Sean rolled his eyes from side to side to look at his friends’ faces. Just as it seemed that nothing would happen, Diane saw the curtains gently billow out of the corner of her eye. Then every body felt the chilly breeze on the their skin as the piece of blank paper beside the pen blew sideways, turning over like a page of an old book.
“Oh, my God! What was that?” Laura said, as she got goosebumps on her skin.
“I don’t know. I saw the living room curtains move and then I felt a chilly breeze on my face. I don’t think it was a draft. The windows are closed now,” Diane said.
“Is there anybody in this house?” Leo asked, waiting for an answer.
A few seconds went by. Then, suddenly, the planchette began to slide across the board, with the four index fingers on it. The pointer stopped at the word ‘yes’.
“Somebody must have pushed it,” Sean said, in disbelief.
“Oh, my God! It’s moving! I didn’t push it,” Laura said.
“I didn’t push it either,” Peter said.
“Who are you?” Leo asked.
The pointer moved again from letter to letter, making up two words; ‘Bird Eye’. Diane immediately picked up the sheet of paper and began to write down.
“Bird Eye?” Diane said, half reading, half inquiring.
“Yes”, signaled the pointer.
“That’s a weird name?” Mathew said.
“I am a man who lived long ago,” the entity said, with the planchette sliding from side to side, and up and down, to form the words.
“When did you die?” Leo asked.
“900 years ago. My people were the first tribe to settle in these parts,” the visitant said.
“An Indian tribe?” Diane asked.
“We were hunters,” the revenant said.
Then there was a long pause as the pointer stopped moving. One by one Peter, Mathew, Laura, and Leo withdrew their forefinger from the planchette. They got tired of holding their arms straight in the same position, without moving them.
“It stopped moving. He must have gone,” Laura said.
`Right then, all of a sudden, the pointer started to slide again, by itself, without anybody putting their finger tips on it. It certainly moved fast.
“The Moon! Watch out! They will arrive here soon,” the entity said, as the pointer stopped sliding. Then a strong breeze blew about in a whirlwind fashion around the table. Swirling into the living room, the strong and mysterious spirit exited out of the house through the chimney.
“Wow! That thing is for real! The stuff moved by itself and then the wind... I believe in the spirit world now!” Sean said, opening wide his eye.
“What did he mean by ‘they’ll arrive here soon,’? Who?” Peter wondered.
“I don’t know, Pete. Let’s summon him back into this world,” Mathew said.
They all sat around the table once again and put the planchette right at the center of the Ouija board. They put their forefingers on top of it and waited, hoping Bird Eye would come back into the house. Seconds went by. Then, as they waited for the visitant to return, they heard a deep rumbling noise that seemed to arise from the earth below. It was immediately followed by a tremor that crawled up the table legs. The Ouija board trembled. Next the whole house shook. They looked at each other, with wide-open eyes.
“What’s that?” Laura asked, frightened.
“That’s an earthquake!” Sean said.
Everybody made for the door; everybody except Leo who remained behind seated on his chair. However, no one got out, for the temblor stopped right before they reached the front door. They rolled their eyes from side to side, checking the furniture, the ornaments on the wall, and the light lamp above to make sure it had really stopped. Then they heard a thump on the floor near them. It was Leo. He had collapsed from his chair, shaking and rolling up his eyes, showing the white of his orbs.
“Look! Your boyfriend is having a seizure. I didn’t know he suffered from epilepsy,” Mathew said, to Diane.
“No, he’s not epileptic. He has something else,” Diane said.
Just as they gathered around him, Leo woke up from his deep convulsive trance. He screwed up his eyes, blinking several times as he looked up at his friends’ faces. He sat up, taking a couple of deep breaths. Then he got up.
“What happened,” Laura asked.
“It was one of those weird seizures. I hadn’t had one since I was 14,” Leo said.
“It’s a bad omen,” Diane, his girlfriend, said.
“What do you mean ‘it’s a bad omen’?” Peter asked.
“I’m gonna tell you something about me. Since I was a kid, I hear voices that tell me what’s gonna happen in the future. And believe me, I’m not crazy,” Leo said.
“What? You’re schizophrenic, or something?” Sean asked, half joking, half serious.
“No, absolutely not. He told you; he’s not mad. He’s telling you the truth,” Diane said.
“Earlier today, I heard the voices once again when we were standing in front of that weird monolith. Twice, I heard them say ‘they’re coming’,” Leo said, with a grave expression on his face.
“I’ve got an idea! Let’s summon Bird Eye again, so he can tell us what he meant by his message,” Mathew said.
“There’s no need to do that. I know what he meant. He just warned us about the moon. Evil is inside it. There are malevolent creatures hiding in the craters on the dark side of the moon. They’re coming,” Leo said.
“What are you talking about? You’re being delusional, Leo!” Sean said.
“Believe me! They’re out there. And they’re malevolent!” Leo asserted, adamantly.
“’Malevolent’?! That’s a good word to describe evil,” Laura said.
“Let me explain to you what the voices have just told me in my trance. They gave me a complete picture,” Leo said
“In your ‘trance’? You mean, when you were having the epileptic fit? OK, go ahead,” Peter said.
“They’ve been there in the deep, tunnel-like craters of the moon for thousands of years. They’ve been dormant in their pods in a state of slow embryogenesis,” he said.
“What! What are you talking about?!” Laura said, quizzically.
“It looks like you’ve read a lot of science fiction stuff,” Sean broke in.
“They’ve been in an embryonic state for many years. Please, believe me. It’s not science fiction. They’re for real and they’re voracious monsters, but they don’t look like monsters,” Leo said.
“How do you know about their existence? I mean, how do you know for certain they really are out there in the moon? Who told you that? Where do these voices come from?” Mathew inquired.
“It was the outer space beings from the sphere who first told me about them ten years ago, when I was a kid. You know, we were spending the weekend in the countryside. It was warm and we, my folks and siblings, were sleeping outside the cabin in the backyard when this UFO popped up in the sky out of nowhere,” he said.
“What kind of UFO?” Peter asked.
“Like I said, it was a sphere, a white spherical object in the sky, for God’s sake! I remember that a spark from the UFO got into my head and I began to shake, and then I rose up horizontally into the sky, levitating, you know; then I was pulled into their ship by some invisible force. But somehow I felt protected inside the sphere. It was a warm and reassuring feeling of solace. Before dawn, they put me back on the cot and they disappeared from the sky,” Leo said.
“Why didn’t you tell us about this before?” Laura asked.
“Because you wouldn’t have believed him, had he told you about his encounter. You would’ve thought he was being deranged. That’s why,” Diane said, answering for Leo.
“What happened next?” Peter asked.
“The following days, I began to notice that I’d changed. I started to see things differently as I had better memory and deep insight into reality. I also became aware I had the power of foreseeing things, of what would happen in the immediate future, and I still have. My body metabolism is different now, too. Anyway, I’ve never seen another outer space white sphere again, though. For the next couple of years, I warned people about what the moon holds in store for mankind; horrible things,” Leo said.
“Did people believe you?” Laura asked, sardonically.
“Of course not! No one believed me. My mother took me to the hospital and had me seen by a shrink, for God’s sake!” Leo said.
“Tell us about the moon,” Mathew said.
“Millions of years ago, the moon and the Earth were occupied by aliens from an advanced civilization from a large planet in a solar system in Messier 110 galaxy, which neighbors Andromeda. It is located about 2.6 million light years away. They spent a hundred year sojourn on our planet, studying the different animals species as they traveled through time. They used the moon as a base of operation and beacon from which they sent messages to their far-flung planet.
“Before traveling back to their galaxy, they left strange creatures behind in embryonic state in capsules laid in self-propelled cylindrical containers which were deeply inserted in craters on the dark side of the moon. For thousands of years, these embryos have been developing slowly away in the craters of the dark side of the moon. They had been put there to protect them from the future human civilization that would emerge a few thousand years ago. Although they’re extremely smart, they’re ravenous entities that eats every living thing in their path, especially when they’re fully developed and hatch out of their embryonic pods,” Leo said.
“Have you ever been in a mental hospital, or something like that?” Sean said, staring at Leo.
“Come on, Sean! We’ve been friends for almost two years now. You know me very well. I’m a balanced, rational, and collected guy, believe it or not; and my mind is in one indivisible solid piece,” Leo said.
“OK, I believe you. I believe you’re being honest to us all, now, and that you’re telling us about your sensory perceptions in a candid and sincere way,” Sean said.
“OK, guys, I guess it’s about time we hit the sack. It’s late,” Laura said.
“What time are you getting up tomorrow?” Diane asked.
“At 07:30. We start off at 08:30 after breakfast. We have to do the second trail, which is the longest one,” Laura said.
“That’s sounds fine to me. I’ll be in the kitchen at that time,” Peter said, turning around and climbing up the stairs.
The next morning, they left right after breakfast. They did not talk much on their way to the national park. There was a hushed atmosphere in the van. Even Sean seemed to be in a thoughtful mood; a very skeptical young man who did not believe in anything other than proven traditional science, which he was studying at college. When they arrived in the national park, Leo asked a ranger who was standing at the entrance if he knew anything about the monoliths.
“Yeah, we were told about them yesterday and I personally checked on it. No one in the park knows anything about them. We didn’t plant them for sure. I even called the US National Park Service and they told me they don’t know anything about any monolith being planted in the Colorado State either,” the ranger said.
“What are you gonna do about it?” Diane asked.
“Robert, my colleague, already called NASA and sent them a pic. They said they’re coming over in a couple of days to take a look and do some research,” he said.
Having obtained no answer to their questions, they made their way into the forest, taking the second trail. This path was about three times longer and harder than the one they did the day before, with level 3 hiking difficulty. That meant it had steep rises and many bends, with protruding boulders. Also, they would probably have to wade a couple of shallow brooks along the way. However, they were young and full of energy and in good shape.
After three hours hiking, they stopped to take a breather and eat snack and drink mineral water at a spur jutting out from a hillside. Some had nuts and dry figs, other cookies and potato chips. They sat down on the grassy ground to relieve their legs. Laura remained standing, leaning against a huge boulder with one hand to limber up her quadriceps with the other.
“My quadriceps hurt. How long do we still have to walk?” Laura said.
“We’ve done more than half of the trail so far. I reckon we still have to walk for more than an hour to get...” Leo said, stopping his utterance as he cocked one ear, looking sideways.
“What’s wrong?” Sean asked.
“Can you hear it? It’s a faraway rumbling noise,” Leo said.
“Yeah, I hear it, now. I thought it was an aircraft,” Peter said.
As soon as Peter uttered the last sentence, the earth began to shake strongly. It was so powerful that Laura lost her balance and fell to the ground, rolling towards the edge of the cliff, but Sean moved quickly and grabbed her arm on time, pulling her back to the trail. After eighteen seconds, the earthquake stopped.
“Wow! That was strong!” Mathew said.
“I guess that must have been a 6+ on the Richter scale,” Sean said.
“Yeah. But it’s strange because you only get earthquakes that magnitude in places near the site of plates collision, and we’re far away from the Pacific coast,” Diane said.
“And what do you reckon triggered this one? What caused it?” Peter asked.
“It’s the moon that caused it,” Leo broke in.
“What? How can it possible be?” Laura asked.
“You know that the moon has a gravitational influence on the Earth, causing the tides; you know, the rise and fall of the sea levels on coastal regions. This time the moon is having a gravitation influence on the Earth crust,” Leo said.
“How come?” Sean wanted to know.
“I think there’s strong gravitational pull. Maybe the moon has slightly approached the Earth or it has just turned around its axis,” Leo said.
“Yeah, that makes sense,” Peter said.
“You scare us, Leo. I’m quite worried about the future now,” Laura said.
“And I’m worried about my mom. She lives alone at home now, and our home is brick, and I’m not quite sure if it’s seismic-proof,” Diane said.
“Yeah, I’m worried about my folks, too. But there’s no signal to make a phone call. We’re shut off from the urban world here,” Peter said.
Having recovered, they set on the trail again, heading towards the end of its course. They wound through the Rocky Mountains forest as they walked in a line among fir and pine trees. They saw a couple of moose drinking water from a creek. They waded through it knee-deep. The quick running water came from melting snow on high peaks and it felt chilling on their legs.
On the other side of the stream, the path became crooked. It snaked around gigantic trees that rose up high, straight into the sky. They kept on moving without stopping, turning here and there. As they moved, the forest seemed to get thicker. However, the trees finally gave way to thorny bushes and blue columbine and other wildflowers. Then they walked into a large open space.
It was a grassy meadow. As they headed towards the middle of it, they saw another monolith. It was a tall crystal-clear slab, exactly like the one they had seen the day before. The earth around it was also bare, deprived of vegetation. As they approached, they gathered around the megalith, gawking at it in astonishment. They made videos and took pictures of it, with their cell phone.
“It looks identical to the one we saw yesterday,” Mathew said, sliding his hand across it.
“Yes, it’s as if it were a copy,” Sean said.
Just when Laura was about to say something, a powerful aftershock struck the Rocky Mountains. The Earth shook for about twenty five seconds this time. As they tried to keep their balance, they saw two beams of green light streak up into the sky from the crystal megalith; they traveled up fast like lightning. Diane fell to the ground. As the powerful tremor stopped, Leo walked over to Diane and held her hand to help her get to her feet.
“Wow! Did you see the lightning shooting up into the sky from the slab?” Peter asked.
“Yeah! That was unearthly!” said Sean.
“Look! The monolith is glowing!” Laura said.
The strange, rectangular menhir glowed intermittently, with a green light, on and off. As Peter walked up close to it to touch its luminescent surface, the slab began to vibrate and hum like a powerful tuning fork. The sound waves were unbearably intense. They held their hands tight to their ears, screwing up their faces. After a several seconds, it suddenly stopped.
As soon as they got their hands off their ears and straightened their heads, they heard hundreds of birds flutter and call loud as they soared up into the sky from the forest. A large murder of crows cawed ominously as they flew about chaotically above them. There were also hawks and eagles screeching shrilly as they wheeled around high in the sky above the other birds.
“I think we should go back home,” Diane said.
“Home?” Laura wondered.
“I mean, we should go back to the cottage,” Diane said.
“Yeah, we should go back to our base of operation,” Peter said.
They headed back to the cabin, walking the same trail. The sun was about to slip behind the Rocky Mountains in the west by the time Sean drove into the lodge front yard. As they got out of the van, Leo looked up at the sky in the east.
“Look at the moon! I told you there was something wrong with the moon,” Leo said, staring at it.
“Oh my God! The dark side is whole lot bigger than it was yesterday evening!” Laura said.
“Yeah, it looks smaller than a crescent now, even though tomorrow it’s supposed to be full moon! How come?” Sean said.
“The moon has somehow turned on its north-south pole axis and it seems it’s about to face the Earth with its unknown dark side,” Leo said.
“You mean, tomorrow we won’t see the romantic white full moon?” Diane asked.
“Yes, that’s what I mean. Tomorrow we’ll have a very dark night, because it’ll be a black moon,” Leo said.
“There were thirty-five casualties in Denver and fifteen in Grand Junction,” Mathew broke in, looking at his cell phone.
“Yeah, and a bridge near Brighton collapsed. I can use internet and visit a few websites, but I can’t use whatsapp,” Peter said.
“There seems to be a communication outage. I can’t get through to my parents. I’ve tried to call them several times already but the line is dead,” Sean said.
After eating dinner, they went to bed right away, except Diane and Leo. She cleared the table and did the dishes, while Leo gazed at the moon, with his telescope, which he had just brought down from his bedroom and set up in the yard. Sitting on a small stool, he twisted the focusing wheel to zoom in on the moon surface, which was changing its appearance and reversing its phase.
By the time Leo began to gaze at the Earth satellite, the moon had already become only a sliver of that silvery orb, which was the full moon everybody used to enjoy to watch and had expected to see in the sky that evening; the rest of the Earth’s satellite had become a large dark spot, much darker than its surrounding area. The beautiful and romantic moon had a dark side, which was darker than the night sky.
“Wow! The moon seems to keep getting smaller each time I look at it. Don’t you think it could be an eclipse?” Diane said, staring up at the sky as she came out of the house.
“Nope. I’m gazing at it now, and it’s definitely not an eclipse. It’s the dark side turning on us,” Leo said.
As Leo uttered the last sentence, many beams of light suddenly streaked across the sky fleetingly, running up from Earth to the moon. Then the beams of lightning reversed their sense, streaking down across the sky from the moon to our planet. They looked like thin bright threads of energy that fanned out and hit several regions of the Earth. Three of them struck three areas in the national park they had visited that day. As soon as they reached their targets, they went out. A few seconds went by and then they came back on again, racing like lightning across the dark sky. Soon the lightning event repeated fugaciously for a fourth and final time.
“Wow! Did you see that?” Leo asked.
“Yeah. They’re weird type of lightning; moon-lightning! What do you think they are?” Diane said.
“They’re guides and lines of connection between the moon craters and the monoliths on Earth,” Leo said.
“I’m afraid, Leo,” Diane said.
“Me, too. But we must have faith that nothing will happen to us,” Leo said.
“I think we should go back home tomorrow,” Diane said.
The next morning, they got up around 8 AM. One by one, they came down the stairs and sat at the kitchen table for breakfast. This time they were not so keen to go hiking in the forest of the national park. Peter and Mathew wanted to go back to Denver, while the two couples wanted to stay one more day and visit the third menhir. They discussed the situation as they ate.
“I know you’re worried about your folks back in Denver, Peter, but let me reassure you there’s been only minor damage to buildings and a few casualties. I’m quite sure they’re fine. Besides, there’s nothing you could do about it,” Sean said.
“Yeah, yeah, all right, I’ll stay one more day,” Peter said.
“What about you, Mathew? What are you gonna do?” Leo asked.
“You know I have no choice but to stay. I didn’t come here in my own car. It’s Sean’s van we depend on to go back home,” Mathew said.
“Yeah, you’d better stay here, if you want to witness a major event,” Leo said.
“How safe is it gonna be to watch them coming,” asked Laura.
“All I can tell you, you’re gonna be safe enough to watch them land, and then you’re gonna have plenty of time to go back home in one piece, but you’ll have to do as I say,” Leo said.
“All right, shall we set out on the road again?” Sean said.
When they got to the parking areas of the national park, they noticed two federal government agency official vehicles; an FBI black car and a NASA black pick-up truck. There was also a National Guard truck. They got out and headed to the entrance to the third trail.
“I see you’re having special visitors,” Leo said, to the park clerk as he paid the entrance fees.
“Yeah, they’ve just arrived. They’re on their way to check on those monoliths that were mysteriously planted the day before yesterday,” the clerk said.
More than wanting to hike along another path and visiting a different part of the national park, this time they wanted to know if there was really a third monolith and what it looked like. Since this trail was shorter than the one they did the day before, it took them only three hours to walk its full length. As they moved into the natural clearing the path ran into, they saw the third monolith. It was surrounded by NASA and FBI agents who were examining it, with the National Guard soldiers standing several yards away from it.
“Hold on there! Don’t get too close. They are working on it,” a federal agent said, to Leo.
“What do you reckon, Sir? Where do you think it came from?” Sean inquired, even though Leo had already told him all about them .
“I don’t know. The NASA guys tried to take a sample piece off the side of the slab, using an electric saw but it broke. They told me the slab is made of a stuff unknown to mankind, even though it looks like a kind of quartz,” the federal agent said.
“Yesterday, we ran into another monolith, exactly like this one, on the other side of the park. When we were looking at it, a green light came on as it began to glow, sending beams of green light up into the sky,” Peter said.
“Yes! It was like lightning. Then it began humming and vibrating like a tuning fork,” Laura broke in.
“Follow me. I want you to tell the NASA agents exactly what you witnessed yesterday; what you saw and what you heard,” the federal officer said.
As they gave the NASA specialists a detailed account of what they experienced the day before, a rumbling noise arose from the horizon, being followed immediately by an earthquake. It was as strong as the one that shook the earth the day before. Leo and his friends struggled to keep their balance, with a couple of them squatting down on the ground, while four of the federal agents hung onto the outer space slab.
Two green beams of energy shot up into the sky from the slab, giving off collateral bolts of yellow lightning that electrocuted all four officers. When the temblor stopped, they turned to look at the monolith and saw the smoking bodies of the federal agents lying on the ground as they smoldered on.
“Oh my God! They’re dead!” Diane said.
“They were fried!” a surviving NASA agent said.
The monolith sent out two more shafts of light into the sky. The remaining federal agents backed up in fear. Leo and his friends could catch a glimpse of the directional path they followed. They had gone up slantingly, at 75 degrees angle of inclination, into outer space.
“Where do the bolts of lightning travel to?” Mathew asked.
“To an alien space probe which relays the energy signals to the pods in the moon craters. The moon’s gonna rise from there, the east,” Leo said, pointing at a sector in the sky near the eastern horizon.
“It’s full moon today. What time is it gonna rise?” Laura asked.
“At 08:50 PM. But I warn you; it’s gonna be a black moon,” Leo said.
“I think we should go back to the lodge,” Diane said.
As they got into the van, thousands of birds soared up high from the forest trees and fluttered about in heavens and covered the afternoon sun. The flapping of their wings whirred ominously. As Sean backed up his van and turned around to hit the road, a murder of crows swooped down out of the sky and swarmed around the vehicle, some hitting the windshield and falling sideways, some perching on the van roof rack. The black birds followed them all the way to the house where they flew away out of sight.
“What are we gonna do now?” Mathew said, to Leo, who was sitting on the couch, looking blankly at some point in space.
“I think we should calm down now and relax so we can think clearly and focus our minds on what we’re gonna do next,” Leo said, turning his head sideways.
“Yeah, we still have four and half hours. I’m gonna eat something. I’m hungry,” Peter said, heading for the kitchen.
“I’ll have a cup of coffee,” Sean said, rising from his chair to grab the coffee jug.
Leo stretched out his legs and put his feet up on the low table in front of him. He held his fingers to his temples, with a deep-furrow frown on his forehead. He knew what would come down to Earth. The voices had clearly told him about it a long time ago, but he had decided to shut his mouth tight about it as he wanted to lead an ordinary life, with friends, and a girlfriend. He wanted to be an ordinary kind of guy. Thus, he had not told his college classmates his secrets, except Diane, his girlfriend.
He had kept his UFO and the voices story sealed in his mind until they arrived there, at the cottage at the Colorado Rocky Mountain Range. Yes, he knew about the dormant creatures, but he was not the only one, for the federal government high ranking agents from the deep State also knew about the extraterrestrial cylinders in the moon craters. The crew of the Apollo 14 mission had discovered one of the strange metal cylinders in one crater on the boundary between the sunlit surface and the dark side of the moon on February 8, 1971.
On the third day of the mission, the commander of Apollo 14, Alan Shepard, hit a golf ball twice to prove the effect of the light lunar gravitational pull. The first time, he did not strike it well enough, grazing it sideways with his club, with the ball spinning forward a few yards, but it did not seem to stop spinning. The second time, he hit hard and well. The ball flew away, fast and out of sight. A couple of seconds went by when Shepard and the lunar module pilot, Edgar Mitchell, saw a thin beam of light go up from the moon surface, immediately being followed by a small, meteor-like fireball on the horizon where the dark side of the moon began, and then it went out as suddenly as it had popped up.
The golf ball seemed to have been blown up by some type of energy. Having informed the command module pilot, Stuart Roosa, about the strange phenomenon they had seen, Shepard and Mitchell walked in the direction the ball had gone, to the boundary line, where it went up in flames about two hundred and fifty yards away. More than walking, they hopped along because of the light gravitational pull of the moon. As they approached the dark side, they slowed down and began to edge gingerly towards the rim of the crater, half the diameter of which lay in the pitch-black shadow of the dark side.
As they got to the lip of the big hole, they bent their bodies forwards to take a look inside. It was completely dark down there, except for a ring of light at the bottom. They could not believe what they were seeing; a ring of light was not a natural feature of the lunar landscape. To see clearly what it was all about, Mitchell turned on the flashlight on his astronaut helmet. It seemed to be some kind of a round, metal container, about six feet in diameter, pearly gray in color, with a glossy aspect. There was a deep groove running across the top of the tube, whose body went all the way down deep into the crater.
Just when Shepard was about to brief Stuart Roosa about the finding via radio, a powerful and blinding flash of white light was thrown up out of the hole from the top of the cylinder, dazzling the two astronauts. Instinctively, they spun around and began to move away from the crater. It was so powerful that even the strongly tinted glass on their helmet failed to protect their eyes from temporarily becoming blind. When they recovered their sight, they returned to the lunar module, informing Stuart Roosa about the alien occurrence. The command module pilot in turn briefed the NASA engineers about what the astronauts had witnessed. However, the US President, Richard Nixon ordered NASA and his staff to keep this information top secret.
“Hey! Do you want something to eat?” Diane asked Leo, who had sunk into a reverie.
“Yeah, I’m hungry,” he said, as he rose from the couch to join the others who were already eating an early dinner.
“So, what are we gonna do?” Peter asked.
“I already told you. We’re gonna witness the greatest event in history?” Leo said.
“What are you talking about?” Laura said, nervously, forgetting they had to go back to the monolith site.
“The extraterrestrial visit. The lunatics are coming. The cylinders are gonna land in each one of the clearing in the forests along the Rocky Mountains as well as in the Appalachian mountains in the east. They’re coming by the thousands,” Leo said.
“You’re crazy! I don’t wanna die!” Mathew said.
“Many people are gonna die any way, but not yet, and it’s not gonna be dangerous to watch them come from outer space and land. Nothing will happen to you if you do as I say. It’ll take about one hour for them to hatch out of the capsules,” Leo said.
Chapter III
At 07:30 PM, Leo and Diane and their four friends got into the van and headed for the national park once again. When they got to the entrance, the clerks controlling the admission had already gone. Aside from the two FBI cars and the National Guard truck, there was also a Toyota Corolla parked at the entrance. They took the same course, the one they had done earlier in the morning. Each one of them carried their backpack, with their cell phone and camera, and mineral water.
Along the way, they caught up with three young men from the East Coast. They told them that the strong earth tremors were felt in Massachusetts, too, and the scientific community was astounded about the abnormal patterns of the moon movement. They also said that the earthquakes toppled several several skyscrapers and knocked down bridges throughout the United States and Canada. They did not know anything about Europe because internet and TV signal had gone out. People began to use radios from the old days as ham radio operators became very useful.
When they arrived in the glade, the monolith was glowing green. It was surrounded by National Guard troops and the FBI officers and a NASA expert. Mesmerized at the sight of the extraterrestrial object, the three easterners went on to get close to it, gazing intently at it. Sean and the rest of his friends hung back on the perimeter, on the edge between the clearing and the forest. That was what Leo had told them to do, that it was wise to give the thing a wide berth.
They sat down on the wild grass, with their cameras and cell phone ready, talking and keeping a close watch on the monolith. The sun had set a few minutes before and the sky over the Rocky Mountains in the west had turned orange, with light saffron yellow streaks. It was completely quiet; they heard no owl hooting and no crow cawing. It seemed that all the birds had flown away. In contrast to most mammals, they seemed have the inborn ability to sense danger.
Leo and his friends heard an FBI officer order the three easterners to back up and stay away. Complying with the authorities’ demand, the young men turned around and walked away from the monolith, joining them and remaining on the brink of the clearing to look at it from a distance.
“I doubt they’re FBI agents,” Laura said.
“Why do you think they don’t work for the Bureau?” Mathew asked.
“Because I have the impression they belong to a different, maybe super secret branch of government. They’re all wearing black, even the National Guard troops. They also have a different bearing. They’re strange people,” Laura said.
“Look! A black moon!” Sean said, loud.
In the eastern sky, there was a huge, pitch-black spot where the white full moon was supposed to be. It was much darker than the leaden sky of dusk on the opposite side of sunset. The Earth satellite was finally showing its uncanny gloomy side as it slowly climbed up the vault of heaven. Leo walked a few yards closer to the monolith and shouted at the government agents to take a look at the eastern sky.
“Wow! You were right, Leo. We’re witnessing a historical event!” Peter said.
“Hold your horses, guys! This is nothing compared to what you’re gonna see,” Leo said.
The brief conversation gave way to a long period of deep silence that seemed to float down from sky to pervade it all. As the minutes went by, their anxiety increased. They looked at the black moon, then at the glowing monolith, next at the Rocky Mountains skyline where the light saffron color had turned into crimson red of blood. They were all munching on peanuts and almond, more out of anxiety and expectations than out of real hunger; it was the primitive impulse to bite on something when one was nervous.
When the black moon reached half way its path between the zenith and the eastern horizon, the monolith began to send out intermittently shafts of green light. This time, they went up straight to the pitch-black spot. The federal agents winced and took several steps backward, away from the extraterrestrial slab. First, the energy beams shot up every other seven second for a while, then every other three, until the two green rays became steady, connecting the Earth with the dark side of the moon.
Leo and his friends noticed other light beams streaking across the sky. They were being sent out by the other monoliths located in the different clearings in the forest. Then they felt the ground shake under their feet. But this time, it was not an earthquake; it just shuddered and jarred like a jackhammer drilling reinforced concrete on the street. The vibration arose from the alien slab, which whirred in a low-pitch noise.
“It’s the monolith that is shaking the ground,” Sean said, gazing at it intently, moving two steps forward.
“Don’t get close to it!” Laura told him.
The light beams from the hundreds of crystal slabs on Earth reached the dark side of the moon and made their way into each one of the craters that contained the cylinders. The green rays activated all the tubes, which began to vibrate. At the middle of each cylinder body, a band of red light got turned on, while a green light came on in the deep notch that ran across the top of the tubes. The propulsion system was located at their lower end, which sat at the bottom of the crater.
One by one, the outer space tubes took off out of their lunar crater, in which they had been nestling for millions of years. They headed for Earth, traveling the 238,828-mile distance which kept the moon and our planet apart. Using a strange propulsion system, they sailed extremely fast across space. It only took them twenty minutes to reach the Earth. Once the entered the Earth’s atmosphere, they converted into fireballs due to friction against the terrestrial gases called air.
Wow! Look! Fireballs in the sky,” Mathew said, pointing at the incandescent objects hurtling down to Earth.
“Yes! It looks like meteorites are raining down from outer space,” Laura said, opening wide her eyes.
“Nope, they aren’t meteors. They’re alien visitors,” Leo said, looking up at the sky, with a calm expression on his face, as the black moon and the fireballs in the sky confirmed what the voices and the visions in his dreams had been warning him since he was a boy.
The cylinders approached the surface of our planet headlong at great speed. However, as they came closer, they began to gradually slow down their fall, being guided and controlled by the pair of green beams that had activated them in the craters. Their propulsion system had gotten turned off the moment they entered our atmosphere. Now, they were being drawn to the ground simply by our planet gravitational pull.
Leo and the rest of the people gathered near the crystal slab noticed that three of the alien tubular objects were heading toward the National Park, and one of them was coming directly down towards the clearing in the forest where they were right now.
As the cylinder drew near the glade, the monolith hummed louder as it shone with a brighter light. The huge alien object had decreased its falling speed so sharply, that it seemed to be floating down now, like a feather descending softly through the air. It was being held up and directed by the two beams of energy that was emitted by the crystal slab. Then it hovered sixteen feet over the monolith, coming down slowly.
When the cylinder floated perfectly upright, approximately seven feet above, the green light beams went out and it dropped down vertically. The deep groove that ran across the full diameter of the tube at the bottom slid snugly down onto the crystal monolith, coupling onto it. The hum lowered in pitch and now it sounded like the buzz of an AC transformer.
“Oh my God! I can’t believe what I’m seeing,” Diane said.
“The whole thing looks so surreal, just out of a dream,” Peter said.
“You were right, Leo. You are not schizophrenic after all. You were telling us the truth. But I don’t know if you’re holding back some thing else from us,” Sean said, turning his head sideways to look at him.
“All I can tell you is that these rectangular, crystal structures have been here for thousands of years. They had been biding their time, hidden under the surface of the earth, until one day, they just cropped up above the ground,” Leo said.
What was the top of the cylinder, with the crosswise groove, when it was in the moon crater, now it was the bottom, which rested upon the upper edge of the monolith. Thus, the rectangular crystal block provided the alien tubular capsule with the necessary energy to complete its final phase during the next couple of hours.
The monolith was also programmed to protect the cylinder from unknown threat. When the federal agents cautiously inched forward to the center of the clearing to check on the outer space tube, several bolts of lightning sprang up from the base of the alien menhir. Like the others that had already been killed that morning, these agents were also struck dead and their charred bodies now lay inert on the ground. Then a sergeant ordered the National Guard soldiers to open fire on the cylinder, but before they were able to pull their rifle trigger, they were also electrocuted by extraterrestrial lightning.
Leo and his friends first winced back at the sudden supernatural occurrence. Then they turned around and scampered away into the forest, where they instinctively threw themselves to the ground, out of fear of being hit by lightning.
“Are you OK?” Leo asked.
“Yes, we’re fine,” Laura said.
“Me, too,” said one of the three tourists from the East Coast.
After a couple of minutes, they turned around and crawled back to the edge of the clearing. The area was dimly lit by the glow of the monolith, on top of which, the huge outer space cylinder rose high above the ground. They gazed at it intently in awe, with their cameras and cellphones ready to shoot any possible weird occurrences that might take place out of the blue. The low humming sound still went on, adding tension and suspense.
In the heat of the Summer night, they waited, with anxious expectations. They were extremely drawn by curiosity, yet at the same time they all were also very afraid; all of them, except Leo, who wore an impassive countenance. He seemed to have changed and showed a strange detached attitude. Diane took a long swig of water and then handed the bottle to him. She looked at him in profile as he gulped down the cool water, with his Adam’s apple bobbing up and down.
“You don’t seem to be afraid or anxious. You look so calm and composed,” Diane said.
“Yes, I feel at ease but I can hardly wait to see what’s gonna happen next,” he said, with a corner of his mouth slightly turned up, betraying an almost imperceptible smugness.
Sean munched on peanuts, looking sideways at Laura from time to time, then at the cylinder. Peter broke his steady gaze at the outer space tube to whisk away the vexing mosquitoes. Among the tree trunks, the humidity levels were high and his skin was clammy.
After a long wait, a lid-like hatch on top of the cylinder popped open, with a strange metallic sound. Then gaseous vapor poured out of the tube, with a long wheeze, like a steam locomotive. However, instead of billowing up into the sky like ordinary steam would, the bizarre vaporous substance crept all the way down the side of the cylinder to the ground, crawling as it spread out in every direction.
The alien mist soon covered the whole glade, flowing into the forest. With the red band of light around its middle portion, the cylinder stuck up above the crawling fog like a beacon. Leo and his friends stood up from their prone position to have a better view of the alien tube and because they did not want to breathe in the strange vapor.
“I hope it’s not poisonous,” Laura said.
“No, it isn’t. But it’s warm,” Leo said, in strange tone, with a raucous voice.
At that moment, the cylindrical object began throwing up the oval capsules into the air. They landed everywhere in the clearing, with a loud thump. A total of thirty six pods were spitted out of the huge tube. One of them fell close to where they were on the edge of the forest. Peter and Sean walked nearer to it to have a close-up view of the unknown object.
“Oh my God! It’s an egg!” said Sean, shining his cellphone flashlight on it.
“Wow! It’s huge! It’s three times bigger than an ostrich egg,” Laura said, gazing at the mottled egg lying on the ground in front of her.
“Why didn’t it break when it landed?” Mathew asked.
“Maybe because it’s a reptile egg. Besides, the bigger it is, the thicker the shell is,” said Sean.
“Yes! I understand now. It’s a dinosaur egg! Leo said that the aliens were here more than one hundred million years ago, in the Mesozoic era,” Peter said.
“Yes, and that was probably the Jurassic period of that geological era,” Laura said.
“By the way, where is Leo?” Diane said.
“Yes, that is the case indeed, but it’s not exactly like that. They wanted to save a few species of dinosaurs from the mass extinction event that would take place during the Cretaceous period, at the end of the Mesozoic, but they altered their genes, blending them in with DNA strands of other species of animals from other geological periods,” said Leo, who had suddenly showed up from the alien mist.
“Are you OK, Leo? You have a funny voice, and your skin is cold and rough,” Diane asked, briefly holding Leo’s arm.
“Look at his mug!” Mathew said, shining the flashlight in his face.
“Oh, my God! Look at you Leo!” Diane said, loud, in an anguished tone of voice.
“Get away from here and find a safe place to hide,” Leo said, as he turned around and scurried into the fog out of sight.
“Did you see his skin?” Laura said.
“Let’s get out of here!” Peter said.
“I won’t leave him here alone!” Diane cried.
“Didn’t you see his face? He’s no longer Leo,” Mathew said, grabbing Diane by her arm, pulling her back as she tried to run after Leo.
“Look! It’s moving!” Laura shouted, gazing down at the egg lying at her feet.
When everybody saw the egg stir sideways, a chill ran down their spine. Frightened, they all made for the path. With a flashlight in his hand, Peter led the group, which included the three easterners; Sean picked up the rear. Under a dark full moon, the night was as black as raven feathers. It would take about two hours for the creatures to fully hatch out, but they were scared and they did not want stay to witness their coming into this world.
As they rushed strenuously through the forest, Diane stumbled on a root that ran across the path and fell. She screamed in pain and in fear, and with a pang of sadness. Sean stopped, stooped over, heaved her to her feet, and kept on running, holding her hand, pulling her on. They finally got to the park entrance and scrambled frantically into the van. They panted, with their chest heaving. They heard the easterners start up their car and accelerate.
“Where is the key? I lost the bloody key!” Sean said, loud, as he fumbled about in his pants pockets.
“It’s right there, in the ignition switch!” Laura said, shining her flashlight on the steering wheel.
Sean turned the key and the van engine sprang into life. He stepped on the gas pedal and took off at full throttle. As they drove, they saw that the strange steam spread out everywhere as it crept towards the road.
“What are we gonna do now?” Laura asked.
“We’ve got to go to Fort Collins,” Sean said.
“I want to go to Denver. I’m from Denver and I’ve got my folks and relatives living there,” Peter said.
“I’m from Denver, too, Peter,” Diane said, sobbing.
“OK, OK, you’re all from Denver and I’m from London. How about that? OK, I tell you what we’re gonna do. We first head straight to Fort Collins to pick up our stuff, and then we drive south to Denver,” Sean said.
“Did you see his face?” Diane asked, weeping.
“I saw him. He no longer had human skin. It looked like reptile skin,” Mathew said.
“He had tiny yellowish white scales, like a snake skin, with slit pupils,” Diane said.
“No wonder why he skittered away fast like a lizard,” Peter said.
“Don’t make fun of him,” Diane said.
“I’m not mocking at him. I’m just stating a fact,” Peter said.
“What are you doing? Why are we stopping here?” Laura asked.
“I have to fill her up if we want to get to Denver,” Sean said, pulling into a gas station.
Having bought snack and mineral water, Sean got into the van and maneuvered around the town side streets, turning left and right. Then he hit a west-bound secondary road, driving in the direction of Fort Collins.
“Why are we driving on this back road?” Mathew asked.
“The filling station attendant told me that a section of the high way bridge on the Osborne River broke and fell down in the last earthquake. So he told me about this secondary road,” Sean said.
There was a hushed atmosphere in the van. Only the slowing down and revving up of the engine could be heard as Sean shifted gears and stepped on the throttle pedal. As they turned around a bend, they saw a car tail light ahead in the distance.
“It looks like a Toyota Corolla tail light,” Laura said.
“Yes, it must be the guys from the East Coast,” Sean said.
“They got very scared when they saw the alien egg,” Peter said.
It took them four hours to get to Fort Collins, where they stopped and waited for a while for Sean to pick up his personal belongings. Having arrived in Denver, the English student dropped off his friends at their homes and then moved into Laura’s apartment. It was late at night.
The following day, internet and cell phone signal came back on. As soon as they got up, they began calling their relatives and friends, telling them what they had witnessed in the national park. To their surprise, nobody believed them. Instead of drawing their full attention and stirring anxiety and horror, the ‘story’ of extraterrestrial monoliths, flying tubes, and gigantic reptilian eggs only induced humor and provoked laughter in them. When they showed them the videos of what they had really seen with their own eyes, their friends brushed them aside as just fake software-made footage.
“What’s the name of that software? Or you did that with AI, perhaps? Do you need a special application to download it?” Michael, a friend of Peter, said.
“Go to hell! Do you hear me? Go to hell and never come back!” Peter said, feeling riled at their disbelief.
Aside from the earthquakes, which had damaged a few buildings, and the strange lunar phenomenon, in which the full moon did not appear, mass media news programs did not mention anything about flying extraterrestrial objects and monoliths in the middle of mountain forests. However, they did inform about the strange greenish fog that spread all along the Rocky Mountain Range. It was first spotted by a small plane pilot, and then by a helicopter. As a result, all national parks had been closed to visitors on security grounds due to the fact that ravines and cliffs could not be seen as the thick mist covered it all. It was deemed the product of strange atmospheric conditions.
Chapter IV
By the time Sean and his friends returned to Denver and began their daily routine, all thirty six creatures had already hatched out of their shells, with Leo guarding and looking after the young. Two days after they broke out of their eggs, Leo donned a scorched national guard uniform he took off the corpse of a dead Sergeant lying nearby the monolith, got into their truck, and drove to the outskirts of town, where there was a small meat processing plant. Using an M16 rifle, Leo forced the four workers present at the animal food facility to load the truck with meat and edible offal. Then he drove back into the fog and the national park to feed the reptilian offspring.
All along the Rocky Mountains, from north to south, tens of thousands of those strange eggs had also been ejected out of alien tubes, with a huge number of human-like beasts breaking out of them into this present world. For every thirty-six batch, there was a guardian, or leader, who would take care of them until they were fully grown. And they grew much quicker than an average human, because they had a fast metabolism due to the large amount of mitochondria in their body cells.
A portion of their DNA had been taken out of medium-sized carnivorous dinosaurs from the archaic reptilian realm which had existed 150 million years before, in the Jurassic period of the Mesozoic. The aliens had collected these genetic materials in certain regions of the globe before a cataclysmic event, which would take place in the Cretaceous, wiped these creatures off the face of the Earth. However, these genes had been altered by blending them into primitive human beings’ DNA strands. Although these humans were primitive, they were already modern Homo sapiens; the Cro-Magnon species from the Quaternary period, in the Cenozoic Era. Thus, the dinosaurs that had hatched out of the lunatic eggs had a new form and appearance, which was completely different from their archaic reptilian ancestors.
The lunatics were anthropomorphic living entities; yes, it meant they had a human form. They walked upright, with their lower limbs being longer than their arms. They had a pair of prehensile (grasping) organs, called hands, at the end of their upper limbs, a stereoscopic vision system, with one eye set beside the other, hence a face. However, there were hidden anatomical differences between them and the real human beings that affected their behavior.
Although they had a brain as large as ours, the creatures’ hippocampus was slightly larger than that of a human’s. The temporal and occipital lobe were also larger, with a well-developed uncinate fasciculus. Thus, they had excellent long-term memory capacity, being able to remember everything in detail what they saw and learned. Their bones were thicker and their muscle fibers were more contractile.
Since they had a fast metabolic rate, with each one of their body cell containing three times the amount of mitochondria found in a human cell, they had to eat plenty of food. Although they were essentially reptiles, they had the body temperature of a bird, 42 degrees Celsius. Their skin was composed of two layers; an outer coat, which consisted of epithelial tissue, and an underlying layer of very small reptilian scales lying over the subcutaneous tissue; these were tiny scales like those found on a skink or on some elapid snakes. However, these scales stood up under stress, when stimulated with an adrenaline rush, protruding outwards as they pushed against the external epithelial tissue. This is what they saw when they looked at Leo’s skin right before he ran out into the mist and disappeared.
These aliens from the large planet in one of the solar systems in Messier 110 galaxy had busily traveled back and forth through the fabric of time from the Jurassic, in the Mesozoic, to the Quaternary, in the Cenozoic era, to engineer new breeds of smart reptilian living entities, with human form and bird metabolism.
It was clear that the aliens wanted to save only some species of dinosaurs; not all of them. But what was strange was the fact that all the new reptilian creatures that had hatched out of their eggs had genetically been engineered into voracious, seven-foot tall carnivores that walked upright and moved like humans. Each one of them was matched by an opposite gender; there was one female for one male. Thus, the thirty six pods formed eighteen couple of human-like reptiles. But what about Leo?
Leo and thousands of other young boys and girls around the Earth were the last experiment carried out by the outer space entities before they definitely went back to their galaxy. When they were calm and composed, they looked exactly like the ordinary human being they used to be, but when they got stressed, as when Mathew shone his cell phone flashlight in Leo’s face, their otherwise round pupils turned slit, like viper snake eyes, and their skin became scaly.
Leo and the other humans turned reptilian would become very important leaders, who would form the new world order’s ruling elite. They had specially been selected for their high intelligence, which had been enhanced during the treatment they had undergone in the outer space sphere when they had been abducted.
During the first phase of the extraterrestrial beings’ experiment, the leaders acted as guardians, looking after their small fledgling saurian army. They had to feed them meat, which they got from nearby farms as livestock, or from the forest as deer and hogs they hunted with a rifle. However, it was the second phase the most challenging, since they had to move to big cities, to live near important government buildings and financial centers and blend in with the population and go unnoticed.
It took the reptilian lunatics only three years to reach their adult body size. Once they learned to speak basic English, Leo drew money from his college fund saving account and bought clothing and shoes for them to wear. Then he hacked a bank account and bought an abandoned small warehouse on Duke St, Alexandria, Virginia, about 8 miles from Washington DC, which was very convenient for the next phase. Next he converted it into living quarters and moved in, with his platoon of anthropomorphic dinosaurs.
To launder the small fortune he made through illegal bank transfers, Leo created a security firm, offering building protection and defense services to local companies, with his distinctive and highly-trained security guards. He bought blue uniforms and a lot of weapons, which included handguns, rifles, and shotguns. In time, he would also buy machine guns and mortars on the black market, stashing away all the weaponry in a small cellar in the former warehouse.
Working as a security guard was the perfect job for his humanoid reptiles. They were tall, powerfully built, with square jaw and broad shoulders. They were also calm and aloof, like a crocodile, but extremely dangerous when enraged. Wearing uniform would make them go unnoticed as they were forced to wear a cap all the time, hiding away a small dinosaurian crest that ran sagittally on the dome of their skull; the only archaic visible feature. It was also the only part of their body where the scales could be observed all the time.
The other leaders had also moved into one of the cities and towns lying near Washington DC, with their platoon of reptilian soldiers. They took up residence in Fairfax, Vienna, McLean, Silver Spring, Potomac, Federick, and other urban centers located around the capital of the nation and also in cities in each one of the fifty States. They proceeded in the same manner as Leo did, buying an unused warehouse or abandoned repository building and then moving in with their reptilian troops. They bought and stored large quantities of weapons, even anti-tank missiles. They also bought plenty of meat to feed them.
All the leaders knew what would happen in the near future. It was revealed to them when they had been abducted by the sphere at a young age. So, now they got ready as they trained their saurian soldiers for that big event; the set up in motion of a global agenda by the world’s powerful elites against mankind and the human civilization to reduce the population, dissolve nations, erase cultural identity, and take over the whole planet. However, Leo and the rest of the leaders would act quickly to forestall the cabal from carrying out the Great Genocide.
Seven years had gone by since they had hatched out of their shells when the humanoid reptiles started their military operation. By then their brain wiring had fully developed. Not only did they have five times the strength of a human athlete, but they were also well-armed and accoutered. They had carefully studied every target to be attacked; the Pentagon, the CIA headquarters, a Special Forces battalion building, the secret military cyberspace communication network command center, the secret AI and autonomous robot command post, the Capitol, the White House, the Supreme Court building, and the private dwellings and bunkers of the cabal billionaires, as well as other secondary objectives.
The ruling elites and their puppets were completely unawares of what was about to happen, as the onslaught came suddenly and out of the blue. The leaders and their reptilian cohorts flawlessly executed a major, nation-wide coup, overthrowing the US government and taking over the political and military control of America. They also took over the control of cyberspace I and II and telecommunication. All elite billionaires were eliminated, their bank accounts terminated, and their private properties seized and put up for auction, with all proceeds going to charity.
The new government first message to the American people and to the world was broadcast live and simultaneously through all means of communication. “The old world order no longer exists. We, the lunatics, took power to forestall the ruling elites from setting in motion their evil scheme. We will govern the country for ten years. Meanwhile, Congress will be closed. We will also close all American military bases around the world. We will use the money surplus to implement housing projects for the homeless, while the health care system will be State-run and for everybody. Our government will be a humanist socialist political system,” Leo, the Great Leader said.
During a seven-year period, since they had hatched out of their eggs, the lunatics had increased twofold their number. And in fifteen years, they would be four times as many. Thus, the saurian population would grow much faster than the human beings. The lunatics also developed a taste for human flesh when they ate the billionaires and politicians they terminated.