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Escape to Adventure: The Dreamers Awaken

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The Case of the Westminster Abbey Ghost
 
For over a decade a ghost has haunted the Abbey. Now it’s up to Sherlock Holmes to solve the case of its death before more tragedy can occur.
 
A ghost haunts the Westminster Abbey. Someone died tragically. Sherlock is tasked to solve the crime that caused the death of the person haunting the Abbey. Revelations will come that are both startling and fantastic.

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A love that has lasted thousands of years comes to an exciting conclusion as a secretary madly in love with her boss embarks on an adventure with him that will change her life forever and his!
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In love in Atlantis at the end as crashing waves and explosions hurtle the continent beneath the ocean forever.

In love in ancient Egypt when hordes of warriors and sabotage face the star crossed lovers.

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Author's Note:

While I have elaborated somewhat on the concept of possession, it is actually quite a remarked field of study...at least as far as the intellectuals are concerned.

There are many, who substantially believe in life after death, and not based on any kind of intellectual discernment, but on the actual experience of communing with, or experiencing the visibility of those who have departed the physical world, but still co-exist with us on what some call the astral plane of existence.

The only trouble as far as I have been able to discern is that those souls who cling to our earth plane do so out of fear, or anger, or needs to hold onto what they had, and therefore will sometimes, if not on a permanent basis actually take over a human body, with the owner of that body being totally unware of such occuring.

This is what possession is as far as Wells saw it. He and most of his fellow artists of his time perceived death as a mere transitory time and that the outcome of death is one goes on into the Light...the tunnel of white light spoken of so much in movies and books...or they cling to the earth and cause troubles, if not actual physical harm to the living over time.

The Hindu faith believes that man is immortal and has many lives.

In the orient some cultures worship their ancestors, whom they believe still live among them...perhaps a way of acknowledging the dead are not truly dead, but still walk among us.

I am not trying to frighten anyone, but only to open up the windows of consciousness to accept that there are many, many possibilities open to us as humans that we either consciously ignore, or do so out of ignorance.

Myself, if death is the end, then no problem. But if not, I'd surely like to have a first class ticket to the other side.

I have, myself, written several stories which deal with the concept of life after death.  (Notably,  the Samuel Light series of stories and novels, which are all available at Amazon.Com.) What I believe as a human being is not as important as what you believe, for we each must make that last step on our own, and all of us will one day learn if what we have read or heard is right...or wrong!

Now to the story of the truly great writer, H.G. Wells.

Yours truly,
John

The Stolen Body

Mr. Bessel was the senior partner in the firm of Bessel, Hart, and Brown, of St. Paul's Churchyard, and for many years he was well known among those interested in psychical research as a liberal-minded and conscientious investigator. He was an unmarried man, and instead of living in the suburbs, after the fashion of his class, he occupied rooms in the Albany, near Piccadilly. He was particularly interested in the questions of thought transference and of apparitions of the living, and in November, 1896, he commenced a series of experiments in conjunction with Mr. Vincey, of Staple Inn, in order to test the alleged possibility of projecting an apparition of one's self by force of will through space.
Their experiments were conducted in the following manner: At a pre- arranged hour Mr. Bessel shut himself in one of his rooms in the Albany and Mr. Vincey in his sitting-room in Staple Inn, and each then fixed his mind as resolutely as possible on the other. Mr. Bessel had acquired the art of self-hypnotism, and, so far as he could, he attempted first to hypnotise himself and then to project himself as a "phantom of the living" across the intervening space of nearly two miles into Mr. Vincey's apartment. On several evenings this was tried without any satisfactory result, but on the fifth or sixth occasion Mr. Vincey did actually see or imagine he saw an apparition of Mr. Bessel standing in his room. He states that the appearance, although brief, was very vivid and real. He noticed that Mr. Bessel's face was white and his expression anxious, and, moreover, that his hair was disordered. For a moment Mr. Vincey, in spite of his state of expectation, was too surprised to speak or move, and in that moment it seemed to him as though the figure glanced over its shoulder and incontinently vanished.
It had been arranged that an attempt should be made to photograph any phantasm seen, but Mr. Vincey had not the instant presence of mind to snap the camera that lay ready on the table beside him, and when he did so he was too late. Greatly elated, however, even by this partial success, he made a note of the exact time, and at once took a cab to the Albany to inform Mr. Bessel of this result.
He was surprised to find Mr. Bessel's outer door standing open to the night, and the inner apartments lit and in an extraordinary disorder. An empty champagne magnum lay smashed upon the floor; its neck had been broken off against the inkpot on the bureau and lay beside it. An octagonal occasional table, which carried a bronze statuette and a number of choice books, had been rudely overturned, and down the primrose paper of the wall inky fingers had been drawn, as it seemed for the mere pleasure of defilement. One of the delicate chintz curtains had been violently torn from its rings and thrust upon the fire, so that the smell of its smouldering filled the room. Indeed the whole place was disarranged in the strangest fashion. For a few minutes Mr. Vincey, who had entered sure of finding Mr. Bessel in his easy chair awaiting him, could scarcely believe his eyes, and stood staring helplessly at these unanticipated things.
Then, full of a vague sense of calamity, he sought the porter at the entrance lodge. "Where is Mr. Bessel?" he asked. "Do you know that all the furniture is broken in Mr. Bessel's room?" The porter said nothing, but, obeying his gestures, came at once to Mr. Bessel's apartment to see the state of affairs. "This settles it," he said, surveying the lunatic confusion. "I didn't know of this. Mr. Bessel's gone off. He's mad!"
He then proceeded to tell Mr. Vincey that about half an hour previously, that is to say, at about the time of Mr. Bessel's apparition in Mr. Vincey's rooms, the missing gentleman had rushed out of the gates of the Albany into Vigo Street, hatless and with disordered hair, and had vanished into the direction of Bond Street. "And as he went past me," said the porter, "he laughed--a sort of gasping laugh, with his mouth open and his eyes glaring--I tell you, sir, he fair scared me!--like this."
According to his imitation it was anything but a pleasant laugh. "He waved his hand, with all his fingers crooked and clawing--like that. And he said, in a sort of fierce whisper, 'life!' Just that one word, 'life!'"
"Dear me," said Mr. Vincey. "Tut, tut," and "Dear me!" He could think of nothing else to say. He was naturally very much surprised. He turned from the room to the porter and from the porter to the room in the gravest perplexity. Beyond his suggestion that probably Mr. Bessel would come back presently and explain what had happened, their conversation was unable to proceed. "It might be a sudden toothache," said the porter, "a very sudden and violent toothache, jumping on him suddenly-like and driving him wild. I've broken things myself before now in such a case . . ." He thought. "If it was, why should he say 'life' to me as he went past?"
Mr. Vincey did not know. Mr. Bessel did not return, and at last Mr. Vincey, having done some more helpless staring, and having addressed a note of brief inquiry and left it in a conspicuous position on the bureau, returned in a very perplexed frame of mind to his own premises in Staple Inn. This affair had given him a shock. He was at a loss to account for Mr. Bessel's conduct on any sane hypothesis. He tried to read, but he could not do so; he went for a short walk, and was so preoccupied that he narrowly escaped a cab at the top of Chancery Lane; and at last--a full hour before his usual time--he went to bed. For a considerable time he could not sleep because of his memory of the silent confusion of Mr. Bessel's apartment, and when at length he did attain an uneasy slumber it was at once disturbed by a very vivid and distressing dream of Mr. Bessel.
He saw Mr. Bessel gesticulating wildly, and with his face white and contorted. And, inexplicably mingled with his appearance, suggested perhaps by his gestures, was an intense fear, an urgency to act. He even believes that he heard the voice of his fellow experimenter calling distressfully to him, though at the time he considered this to be an illusion. The vivid impression remained though Mr. Vincey awoke. For a space he lay awake and trembling in the darkness, possessed with that vague, unaccountable terror of unknown possibilities that comes out of dreams upon even the bravest men. But at last he roused himself, and turned over and went to sleep again, only for the dream to return with enhanced vividness.
He awoke with such a strong conviction that Mr. Bessel was in overwhelming distress and need of help that sleep was no longer possible. He was persuaded that his friend had rushed out to some dire calamity. For a time he lay reasoning vainly against this belief, but at last he gave way to it. He arose, against all reason, lit his gas, and dressed, and set out through the deserted streets--deserted, save for a noiseless policeman or so and the early news carts--towards Vigo Street to inquire if Mr. Bessel had returned.
But he never got there. As he was going down Long Acre some unaccountable impulse turned him aside out of that street towards Covent Garden, which was just waking to its nocturnal activities. He saw the market in front of him--a queer effect of glowing yellow lights and busy black figures. He became aware of a shouting, and perceived a figure turn the corner by the hotel and run swiftly towards him. He knew at once that it was Mr. Bessel. But it was Mr. Bessel transfigured. He was hatless and dishevelled, his collar was torn open, he grasped a bone-handled walking-cane near the ferrule end, and his mouth was pulled awry. And he ran, with agile strides, very rapidly. Their encounter was the affair of an instant. "Bessel!" cried Vincey.
The running man gave no sign of recognition either of Mr. Vincey or of his own name. Instead, he cut at his friend savagely with the stick, hitting him in the face within an inch of the eye. Mr. Vincey, stunned and astonished, staggered back, lost his footing, and fell heavily on the pavement. It seemed to him that Mr. Bessel leapt over him as he fell. When he looked again Mr. Bessel had vanished, and a policeman and a number of garden porters and salesmen were rushing past towards Long Acre in hot pursuit.
With the assistance of several passers-by--for the whole street was speedily alive with running people--Mr. Vincey struggled to his feet. He at once became the centre of a crowd greedy to see his injury. A multitude of voices competed to reassure him of his safety, and then to tell him of the behaviour of the madman, as they regarded Mr. Bessel. He had suddenly appeared in the middle of the market screaming "Life! Life!" striking left and right with a blood-stained walking-stick, and dancing and shouting with laughter at each successful blow. A lad and two women had broken heads, and he had smashed a man's wrist; a little child had been knocked insensible, and for a time he had driven every one before him, so furious and resolute had his behaviour been. Then he made a raid upon a coffee stall, hurled its paraffin flare through the window of the post office, and fled laughing, after stunning the foremost of the two policemen who had the pluck to charge him.
Mr. Vincey's first impulse was naturally to join in the pursuit of his friend, in order if possible to save him from the violence of the indignant people. But his action was slow, the blow had half stunned him, and while this was still no more than a resolution came the news, shouted through the crowd, that Mr. Bessel had eluded his pursuers. At first Mr. Vincey could scarcely credit this, but the universality of the report, and presently the dignified return of two futile policemen, convinced him. After some aimless inquiries he returned towards Staple Inn, padding a handkerchief to a now very painful nose.
He was angry and astonished and perplexed. It appeared to him indisputable that Mr. Bessel must have gone violently mad in the midst of his experiment in thought transference, but why that should make him appear with a sad white face in Mr. Vincey's dreams seemed a problem beyond solution. He racked his brains in vain to explain this. It seemed to him at last that not simply Mr. Bessel, but the order of things must be insane. But he could think of nothing to do. He shut himself carefully into his room, lit his fire--it was a gas fire with asbestos bricks--and, fearing fresh dreams if he went to bed, remained bathing his injured face, or holding up books in a vain attempt to read, until dawn. Throughout that vigil he had a curious persuasion that Mr. Bessel was endeavouring to speak to him, but he would not let himself attend to any such belief.
About dawn, his physical fatigue asserted itself, and he went to bed and slept at last in spite of dreaming. He rose late, unrested and anxious, and in considerable facial pain. The morning papers had no news of Mr. Bessel's aberration--it had come too late for them. Mr. Vincey's perplexities, to which the fever of his bruise added fresh irritation, became at last intolerable, and, after a fruitless visit to the Albany, he went down to St. Paul's Churchyard to Mr. Hart, Mr. Bessel's partner, and, so far as Mr. Vincey knew, his nearest friend.
He was surprised to learn that Mr. Hart, although he knew nothing of the outbreak, had also been disturbed by a vision, the very vision that Mr. Vincey had seen--Mr. Bessel, white and dishevelled, pleading earnestly by his gestures for help. That was his impression of the import of his signs. "I was just going to look him up in the Albany when you arrived," said Mr. Hart. "I was so sure of something being wrong with him."
As the outcome of their consultation the two gentlemen decided to inquire at Scotland Yard for news of their missing friend. "He is bound to be laid by the heels," said Mr. Hart. "He can't go on at that pace for long." But the police authorities had not laid Mr. Bessel by the heels. They confirmed Mr. Vincey's overnight experiences and added fresh circumstances, some of an even graver character than those he knew--a list of smashed glass along the upper half of Tottenham Court Road, an attack upon a policeman in Hampstead Road, and an atrocious assault upon a woman. All these outrages were committed between half-past twelve and a quarter to two in the morning, and between those hours--and, indeed, from the very moment of Mr. Bessel's first rush from his rooms at half-past nine in the evening-- they could trace the deepening violence of his fantastic career. For the last hour, at least from before one, that is, until a quarter to two, he had run amuck through London, eluding with amazing agility every effort to stop or capture him.
But after a quarter to two he had vanished. Up to that hour witnesses were multitudinous. Dozens of people had seen him, fled from him or pursued him, and then things suddenly came to an end. At a quarter to two he had been seen running down the Euston Road towards Baker Street, flourishing a can of burning colza oil and jerking splashes of flame therefrom at the windows of the houses he passed. But none of the policemen on Euston Road beyond the Waxwork Exhibition, nor any of those in the side streets down which he must have passed had he left the Euston Road, had seen anything of him. Abruptly he disappeared. Nothing of his subsequent doings came to light in spite of the keenest inquiry.
Here was a fresh astonishment for Mr. Vincey. He had found considerable comfort in Mr. Hart's conviction: "He is bound to be laid by the heels before long," and in that assurance he had been able to suspend his mental perplexities. But any fresh development seemed destined to add new impossibilities to a pile already heaped beyond the powers of his acceptance. He found himself doubting whether his memory might not have played him some grotesque trick, debating whether any of these things could possibly have happened; and in the afternoon he hunted up Mr. Hart again to share the intolerable weight on his mind. He found Mr. Hart engaged with a well-known private detective, but as that gentleman accomplished nothing in this case, we need not enlarge upon his proceedings.
All that day Mr. Bessel's whereabouts eluded an unceasingly active inquiry, and all that night. And all that day there was a persuasion in the back of Vincey's mind that Mr. Bessel sought his attention, and all through the night Mr. Bessel with a tear-stained face of anguish pursued him through his dreams. And whenever he saw Mr. Bessel in his dreams he also saw a number of other faces, vague but malignant, that seemed to be pursuing Mr. Bessel.
It was on the following day, Sunday, that Mr. Vincey recalled certain remarkable stories of Mrs. Bullock, the medium, who was then attracting attention for the first time in London. He determined to consult her. She was staying at the house of that well-known inquirer, Dr. Wilson Paget, and Mr. Vincey, although he had never met that gentleman before, repaired to him forthwith with the intention of invoking her help. But scarcely had he mentioned the name of Bessel when Doctor Paget interrupted him. "Last night--just at the end," he said, "we had a communication."
He left the room, and returned with a slate on which were certain words written in a handwriting, shaky indeed, but indisputably the handwriting of Mr. Bessel!
"How did you get this?" said Mr. Vincey. "Do you mean--?"
"We got it last night," said Doctor Paget. With numerous interruptions from Mr. Vincey, he proceeded to explain how the writing had been obtained. It appears that in her seances, Mrs. Bullock passes into a condition of trance, her eyes rolling up in a strange way under her eyelids, and her body becoming rigid. She then begins to talk very rapidly, usually in voices other than her own. At the same time one or both of her hands may become active, and if slates and pencils are provided they will then write messages simultaneously with and quite independently of the flow of words from her mouth. By many she is considered an even more remarkable medium than the celebrated Mrs. Piper. It was one of these messages, the one written by her left hand, that Mr. Vincey now had before him. It consisted of eight words written disconnectedly: "George Bessel . . . trial excavn. . . . Baker Street . . . help . . . starvation." Curiously enough, neither Doctor Paget nor the two other inquirers who were present had heard of the disappearance of Mr. Bessel--the news of it appeared only in the evening papers of Saturday--and they had put the message aside with many others of a vague and enigmatical sort that Mrs. Bullock has from time to time delivered.
When Doctor Paget heard Mr. Vincey's story, he gave himself at once with great energy to the pursuit of this clue to the discovery of Mr. Bessel. It would serve no useful purpose here to describe the inquiries of Mr. Vincey and himself; suffice it that the clue was a genuine one, and that Mr. Bessel was actually discovered by its aid.
He was found at the bottom of a detached shaft which had been sunk and abandoned at the commencement of the work for the new electric railway near Baker Street Station. His arm and leg and two ribs were broken. The shaft is protected by a hoarding nearly 20 feet high, and over this, incredible as it seems, Mr. Bessel, a stout, middle-aged gentleman, must have scrambled in order to fall down the shaft. He was saturated in colza oil, and the smashed tin lay beside him, but luckily the flame had been extinguished by his fall. And his madness had passed from him altogether. But he was, of course, terribly enfeebled, and at the sight of his rescuers he gave way to hysterical weeping.
In view of the deplorable state of his flat, he was taken to the house of Dr. Hatton in Upper Baker Street. Here he was subjected to a sedative treatment, and anything that might recall the violent crisis through which he had passed was carefully avoided. But on the second day he volunteered a statement.
Since that occasion Mr. Bessel has several times repeated this statement--to myself among other people--varying the details as the narrator of real experiences always does, but never by any chance contradicting himself in any particular. And the statement he makes is in substance as follows.
In order to understand it clearly it is necessary to go back to his experiments with Mr. Vincey before his remarkable attack. Mr. Bessel's first attempts at self-projection, in his experiments with Mr. Vincey, were, as the reader will remember, unsuccessful. But through all of them he was concentrating all his power and will upon getting out of the body--"willing it with all my might," he says. At last, almost against expectation, came success. And Mr. Bessel asserts that he, being alive, did actually, by an effort of will, leave his body and pass into some place or state outside this world.
The release was, he asserts, instantaneous. "At one moment I was seated in my chair, with my eyes tightly shut, my hands gripping the arms of the chair, doing all I could to concentrate my mind on Vincey, and then I perceived myself outside my body--saw my body near me, but certainly not containing me, with the hands relaxing and the head drooping forward on the breast."
Nothing shakes him in his assurance of that release. He describes in a quiet, matter-of-fact way the new sensation he experienced. He felt he had become impalpable--so much he had expected, but he had not expected to find himself enormously large. So, however, it would seem he became. "I was a great cloud--if I may express it that way--anchored to my body. It appeared to me, at first, as if I had discovered a greater self of which the conscious being in my brain was only a little part. I saw the Albany and Piccadilly and Regent Street and all the rooms and places in the houses, very minute and very bright and distinct, spread out below me like a little city seen from a balloon. Every now and then vague shapes like drifting wreaths of smoke made the vision a little indistinct, but at first I paid little heed to them. The thing that astonished me most, and which astonishes me still, is that I saw quite distinctly the insides of the houses as well as the streets, saw little people dining and talking in the private houses, men and women dining, playing billiards, and drinking in restaurants and hotels, and several places of entertainment crammed with people. It was like watching the affairs of a glass hive."
Such were Mr. Bessel's exact words as I took them down when he told me the story. Quite forgetful of Mr. Vincey, he remained for a space observing these things. Impelled by curiosity, he says, he stooped down, and, with the shadowy arm he found himself possessed of, attempted to touch a man walking along Vigo Street. But he could not do so, though his finger seemed to pass through the man. Something prevented his doing this, but what it was he finds it hard to describe. He compares the obstacle to a sheet of glass.
"I felt as a kitten may feel," he said, "when it goes for the first time to pat its reflection in a mirror." Again and again, on the occasion when I heard him tell this story, Mr. Bessel returned to that comparison of the sheet of glass. Yet it was not altogether a precise comparison, because, as the reader will speedily see, there were interruptions of this generally impermeable resistance, means of getting through the barrier to the material world again. But, naturally, there is a very great difficulty in expressing these unprecedented impressions in the language of everyday experience.
A thing that impressed him instantly, and which weighed upon him throughout all this experience, was the stillness of this place--he was in a world without sound.
At first Mr. Bessel's mental state was an unemotional wonder. His thought chiefly concerned itself with where he might be. He was out of the body--out of his material body, at any rate--but that was not all. He believes, and I for one believe also, that he was somewhere out of space, as we understand it, altogether. By a strenuous effort of will he had passed out of his body into a world beyond this world, a world undreamt of, yet lying so close to it and so strangely situated with regard to it that all things on this earth are clearly visible both from without and from within in this other world about us. For a long time, as it seemed to him, this realisation occupied his mind to the exclusion of all other matters, and then he recalled the engagement with Mr. Vincey, to which this astonishing experience was, after all, but a prelude.
He turned his mind to locomotion in this new body in which he found himself. For a time he was unable to shift himself from his attachment to his earthly carcass. For a time this new strange cloud body of his simply swayed, contracted, expanded, coiled, and writhed with his efforts to free himself, and then quite suddenly the link that bound him snapped. For a moment everything was hidden by what appeared to be whirling spheres of dark vapour, and then through a momentary gap he saw his drooping body collapse limply, saw his lifeless head drop sideways, and found he was driving along like a huge cloud in a strange place of shadowy clouds that had the luminous intricacy of London spread like a model below.
But now he was aware that the fluctuating vapour about him was something more than vapour, and the temerarious excitement of his first essay was shot with fear. For he perceived, at first indistinctly, and then suddenly very clearly, that he was surrounded by faces! that each roll and coil of the seeming cloud-stuff was a face. And such faces! Faces of thin shadow, faces of gaseous tenuity. Faces like those faces that glare with intolerable strangeness upon the sleeper in the evil hours of his dreams. Evil, greedy eyes that were full of a covetous curiosity, faces with knit brows and snarling, smiling lips; their vague hands clutched at Mr. Bessel as he passed, and the rest of their bodies was but an elusive streak of trailing darkness. Never a word they said, never a sound from the mouths that seemed to gibber. All about him they pressed in that dreamy silence, passing freely through the dim mistiness that was his body, gathering ever more numerously about him. And the shadowy Mr. Bessel, now suddenly fear-stricken, drove through the silent, active multitude of eyes and clutching hands.
So inhuman were these faces, so malignant their staring eyes, and shadowy, clawing gestures, that it did not occur to Mr. Bessel to attempt intercourse with these drifting creatures. Idiot phantoms, they seemed, children of vain desire, beings unborn and forbidden the boon of being, whose only expressions and gestures told of the envy and craving for life that was their one link with existence.
It says much for his resolution that, amidst the swarming cloud of these noiseless spirits of evil, he could still think of Mr. Vincey. He made a violent effort of will and found himself, he knew not how, stooping towards Staple Inn, saw Vincey sitting attentive and alert in his arm-chair by the fire.
And clustering also about him, as they clustered ever about all that lives and breathes, was another multitude of these vain voiceless shadows, longing, desiring, seeking some loophole into life.
For a space Mr. Bessel sought ineffectually to attract his friend's attention. He tried to get in front of his eyes, to move the objects in his room, to touch him. But Mr. Vincey remained unaffected, ignorant of the being that was so close to his own. The strange something that Mr. Bessel has compared to a sheet of glass separated them impermeably.
And at last Mr. Bessel did a desperate thing. I have told how that in some strange way he could see not only the outside of a man as we see him, but within. He extended his shadowy hand and thrust his vague black fingers, as it seemed, through the heedless brain.
Then, suddenly, Mr. Vincey started like a man who recalls his attention from wandering thoughts, and it seemed to Mr. Bessel that a little dark-red body situated in the middle of Mr. Vincey's brain swelled and glowed as he did so. Since that experience he has been shown anatomical figures of the brain, and he knows now that this is that useless structure, as doctors call it, the pineal eye. For, strange as it will seem to many, we have, deep in our brains--where it cannot possibly see any earthly light--an eye! At the time this, with the rest of the internal anatomy of the brain, was quite new to him. At the sight of its changed appearance, however, he thrust forth his finger, and, rather fearful still of the consequences, touched this little spot. And instantly Mr. Vincey started, and Mr. Bessel knew that he was seen.
And at that instant it came to Mr. Bessel that evil had happened to his body, and behold! a great wind blew through all that world of shadows and tore him away. So strong was this persuasion that he thought no more of Mr. Vincey, but turned about forthwith, and all the countless faces drove back with him like leaves before a gale. But he returned too late. In an instant he saw the body that he had left inert and collapsed--lying, indeed, like the body of a man just dead--had arisen, had arisen by virtue of some strength and will beyond his own. It stood with staring eyes, stretching its limbs in dubious fashion.
For a moment he watched it in wild dismay, and then he stooped towards it. But the pane of glass had closed against him again, and he was foiled. He beat himself passionately against this, and all about him the spirits of evil grinned and pointed and mocked. He gave way to furious anger. He compares himself to a bird that has fluttered heedlessly into a room and is beating at the window- pane that holds it back from freedom.
And behold! the little body that had once been his was now dancing with delight. He saw it shouting, though he could not hear its shouts; he saw the violence of its movements grow. He watched it fling his cherished furniture about in the mad delight of existence, rend his books apart, smash bottles, drink heedlessly from the jagged fragments, leap and smite in a passionate acceptance of living. He watched these actions in paralysed astonishment. Then once more he hurled himself against the impassable barrier, and then with all that crew of mocking ghosts about him, hurried back in dire confusion to Vincey to tell him of the outrage that had come upon him.
But the brain of Vincey was now closed against apparitions, and the disembodied Mr. Bessel pursued him in vain as he hurried out into Holborn to call a cab. Foiled and terror-stricken, Mr. Bessel swept back again, to find his desecrated body whooping in a glorious frenzy down the Burlington Arcade. . . .
And now the attentive reader begins to understand Mr. Bessel's interpretation of the first part of this strange story. The being whose frantic rush through London had inflicted so much injury and disaster had indeed Mr. Bessel's body, but it was not Mr. Bessel. It was an evil spirit out of that strange world beyond existence, into which Mr. Bessel had so rashly ventured. For twenty hours it held possession of him, and for all those twenty hours the dispossessed spirit-body of Mr. Bessel was going to and fro in that unheard-of middle world of shadows seeking help in vain. He spent many hours beating at the minds of Mr. Vincey and of his friend Mr. Hart. Each, as we know, he roused by his efforts. But the language that might convey his situation to these helpers across the gulf he did not know; his feeble fingers groped vainly and powerlessly in their brains. Once, indeed, as we have already told, he was able to turn Mr. Vincey aside from his path so that he encountered the stolen body in its career, but he could not make him understand the thing that had happened: he was unable to draw any help from that encounter. . . .
All through those hours the persuasion was overwhelming in Mr. Bessel's mind that presently his body would be killed by its furious tenant, and he would have to remain in this shadow-land for evermore. So that those long hours were a growing agony of fear. And ever as he hurried to and fro in his ineffectual excitement, innumerable spirits of that world about him mobbed him and confused his mind. And ever an envious applauding multitude poured after their successful fellow as he went upon his glorious career.
For that, it would seem, must be the life of these bodiless things of this world that is the shadow of our world. Ever they watch, coveting a way into a mortal body, in order that they may descend, as furies and frenzies, as violent lusts and mad, strange impulses, rejoicing in the body they have won. For Mr. Bessel was not the only human soul in that place. Witness the fact that he met first one, and afterwards several shadows of men, men like himself, it seemed, who had lost their bodies even it may be as he had lost his, and wandered, despairingly, in that lost world that is neither life nor death. They could not speak because that world is silent, yet he knew them for men because of their dim human bodies, and because of the sadness of their faces.
But how they had come into that world he could not tell, nor where the bodies they had lost might be, whether they still raved about the earth, or whether they were closed forever in death against return. That they were the spirits of the dead neither he nor I believe. But Doctor Wilson Paget thinks they are the rational souls of men who are lost in madness on the earth.
At last Mr. Bessel chanced upon a place where a little crowd of such disembodied silent creatures was gathered, and thrusting through them he saw below a brightly-lit room, and four or five quiet gentlemen and a woman, a stoutish woman dressed in black bombazine and sitting awkwardly in a chair with her head thrown back. He knew her from her portraits to be Mrs. Bullock, the medium. And he perceived that tracts and structures in her brain glowed and stirred as he had seen the pineal eye in the brain of Mr. Vincey glow. The light was very fitful; sometimes it was a broad illumination, and sometimes merely a faint twilight spot, and it shifted slowly about her brain. She kept on talking and writing with one hand. And Mr. Bessel saw that the crowding shadows of men about him, and a great multitude of the shadow spirits of that shadowland, were all striving and thrusting to touch the lighted regions of her brain. As one gained her brain or another was thrust away, her voice and the writing of her hand changed. So that what she said was disorderly and confused for the most part; now a fragment of one soul's message, and now a fragment of another's, and now she babbled the insane fancies of the spirits of vain desire. Then Mr. Bessel understood that she spoke for the spirit that had touch of her, and he began to struggle very furiously towards her. But he was on the outside of the crowd and at that time he could not reach her, and at last, growing anxious, he went away to find what had happened meanwhile to his body. For a long time he went to and fro seeking it in vain and fearing that it must have been killed, and then he found it at the bottom of the shaft in Baker Street, writhing furiously and cursing with pain. Its leg and an arm and two ribs had been broken by its fall. Moreover, the evil spirit was angry because his time had been so short and because of the painmaking violent movements and casting his body about.
And at that Mr. Bessel returned with redoubled earnestness to the room where the seance was going on, and so soon as he had thrust himself within sight of the place he saw one of the men who stood about the medium looking at his watch as if he meant that the seance should presently end. At that a great number of the shadows who had been striving turned away with gestures of despair. But the thought that the seance was almost over only made Mr. Bessel the more earnest, and he struggled so stoutly with his will against the others that presently he gained the woman's brain. It chanced that just at that moment it glowed very brightly, and in that instant she wrote the message that Doctor Wilson Paget preserved. And then the other shadows and the cloud of evil spirits about him had thrust Mr. Bessel away from her, and for all the rest of the seance he could regain her no more.
So he went back and watched through the long hours at the bottom of the shaft where the evil spirit lay in the stolen body it had maimed, writhing and cursing, and weeping and groaning, and learning the lesson of pain. And towards dawn the thing he had waited for happened, the brain glowed brightly and the evil spirit came out, and Mr. Bessel entered the body he had feared he should never enter again. As he did so, the silence--the brooding silence--ended; he heard the tumult of traffic and the voices of people overhead, and that strange world that is the shadow of our world--the dark and silent shadows of ineffectual desire and the shadows of lost men--vanished clean away.
He lay there for the space of about three hours before he was found. And in spite of the pain and suffering of his wounds, and of the dim damp place in which he lay; in spite of the tears--wrung from him by his physical distress--his heart was full of gladness to know that he was nevertheless back once more in the kindly world of men.

Sammie held the stone in his hand and closed his eyes. A vague image began to filter into his consciousness. But he couldn't hold it. It vanished. He opened his eyes, then stooped and picked up another rock. He touched it to his forehead and saw a man laughing his guts out. He was tall and lithe and had worry lines up and down his face, but he laughed like a madman. Then the man looked at Sammie. "Help me!" He cried out.

Sammie dropped the stone as if he had been burned, causing his mop of blonde hair, which was dripping wet from the heat to fall into his eyes.

He eyed the desert uncertainly. His eyes matched the blueness of the skies as he searched the Joshua trees extending as far as the eye could see. He had driven to the Mojave Desert from Las Vegas on his electric bike. He had pulled an electric motor, and hooked it up to the gears of the back wheel of the back, packed on two solar batteries capable of powering it, alternating between the two, and set up a scratch generator that would generate power whenever he slowed down, turned or braked. Between the solar power and the scratch generator he had enough power to go the distance. It was just one of his inventions he found time to fool around with in his garage whenever spare time allowed, which wasn't often since he was involved in Baseball, Track, Swimming and Football, as well as DJ'd the dances at school whenever he could. Sometimes it helped to be the tallest guy at the school.

He had a busy life. Maybe it was because he had such an active mind, or maybe it was because he saw so much more than most people did. You see, Sammie was spiritually aware. Some call people like that psychic, but it's just another name for someone who can see the dead, the future, the past and auras among many other things.

Sammie had gone with Jimbo numerous times to visit psychics only to find out that they were smoke and mirrors and it was easy to see why Sir Arthur Conan Doyle spent the latter part of his life exposing them, because they preyed on the weak minded and the ignorant.

"What do you think, Sammie?" He asked himself, swatting a huge fly from his forehead where beads of sweat were drizzling down from the hot sun overhead. "Home or stone?"

He tossed a coin, and then caught it on the back of his elbow. Heads. "Stone."

He pulled his electric bike further off the dirt path he had followed from the 15 South and parked it against a large Joshua Tree in the shade so the handlebars wouldn't scald his fingers and palms, and then he searched the brush for a time, making a kind of weaving pattern of search and seize. Lately he had been able to tune into which rocks to try first, but still got disappointed occasionally when the rocks proved to be only whiffs...not true impressions, such as the first one he had experienced.

Sometimes he was able to get a glimpse into the far past. Once he had seen a miner fall into the open hole of his own silver mine, another miner with a smoking gun in his hand and a nasty grin on his face. That dead miner had risen from his grave and attached himself to the violent one who had struck him dead with a bullet. Smiling at the man he was now settling over, he had said. "And now I'm going to haunt you until the day you die, you bastard coyote sonuva bitch!"

That was Sammie's first clue that people didn't just die, but that they also made choices. They could stay on the earth or go on...into a kind of tunnel of white light. He had seen one of those just weeks ago and was still trying to figure out the mechanics of that, but the possession thing, that truly frightened him. How could one know they were possessed, if the spirit attached to them became part of them?

He shook his head. Not his problem to solve. Yet.

He found his rock. It lay next to a rusty arrowhead that had been dug up by a prairie dog as it made its hole next to a Joshua tree. The dog looked out at him from its hole and began scalding him for interrupting its peace and quiet.

"Sorry, little guy." He told it, and then dropped to a knee. He plucked a bag of peanuts from his wind jacket and laid out a course of them near the hole. The prairie dog squeaked at him as if saying, "Not that easy I'm not!" Then the little guy swiftly grabbed a nut and disappeared into its hole. Several moments later it peeked out to see if Sammie was still there and watching, then shot out and grabbed another peanut. It repeated its forays for food until all the nuts were gone. It vanished into its hole a long time, and Sammie thought he could grab the stone t hen, but as he started to reach the prairie dog stuck its head out and began scalding him again.

Sighing, Sammie put a mound of nuts in the palm of his hand and laid it down before him. The prairie dog cocked an eye on him, then on the nuts. Nothing ventured, nothing gained. It crept over slowly, its tail bouncing, and then stiffening tensely as it neared his palm of nuts. Finally, it sniffed at his palm, made a coughing, wheezing sound, then reached out with its dainty front paws, took a nut and without running, began to eat the nuts until they were all gone. Finished, it laid down next to his palm, its eyes on his face.

"You're really cute." Sammie told it.

The prairie dog made a tiny barking sound like laughter, swished its tail, gave him a quick nuzzle with its nose on his wrist, then flung itself back into its hole.

Sammie laughed, and then grabbed the stone.

WHAM!

Sammie stood before a vast lake that shimmered over the desert. It had snowed this winter, but the hot sun had started melting it and distributing its drizzling remains across the desert floor, allowing tiny pools of water and ponds to form. He looked at his hands and noticed he had a bow and arrow in them.

He raised his palms and saw they were weathered and quite reddish brown, as if baked in an oven. He squinted to the East and saw the smoky mountains in the distance and brief flares of lighting and then distant thunders.

"We must get home, Bright Feather." His companion told him.

He turned to look in the face of an older man. His father. Chief Sky in the Clouds. He was the oldest of their tribe and its leader. He put a hand warmly on his son's bow hand. "Don't feel bad, Bright Feather, there will be other days to hunt. But the storm is coming and I fear it will be a nasty one."

They rushed across the desert, jogging, making good time, but the storm clouds were already sweeping overhead. Lances of lightning struck the ground behind them, sending blasts of warm air at their heels.

"The Sky Father is angry with us, father." He said.

"No. We were foolish not to have run sooner." His father said, and then stumbled as a bolt of lightning as bright as the sun flung itself into his back, lancing him from behind.

He stopped and dropped beside his father, who lay still. His back was smoking. His father looked up in to his eyes. "Run, Bright Feather. Run. The Sky Father comes for us both this day." And then his spirit departed. He could see his father rise like smoke from the smoldering body and leap onto a sky pony and fling into the skies high above the bastard storm and lightning.

WHAM!

Sammie found himself lying beside the Joshua tree; the prairie dog was licking on his face and making fearful sounds. When his eyes opened, it scampered away a safe distance and began scalding him. Foolish human, leave the dead to the dead.

Sammie smiled. It was more likely saying "How about some more peanuts?"

Sammie groaned. His forehead was cut from grazing the sharp blades of the Joshua tree, but he would survive. He groaned again, and then rose to his feet. He took the rest of the bag of peanuts, and then sprinkled them all before the prairie dog, which immediately began eating them; stopping only to give him a quick bark of thanks or scalding, then continue eating again.

Sammie found his electric bike, pulled it to the dirt path he had driven into the desert on and started it. He drove off, pondering what he had seen. He didn't get far when something caught his eye. He stopped the bike, and got off. He tramped about three yards into the rougher part of the desert, avoiding holes and drop-offs until he found the broken wood he had spotted. It was ancient and rotting. But there was no question it was the remains of a bow.

He stooped to pick it up.

WHAM!

Sammie ran and ran and ran, but the lightning strikes were coming closer and closer. He saw the safety of a clump of Joshua Trees and headed for it, but before he could reach them he was lit up like a gigantic bonfire for a tribal feast. He felt his spirit flung from his body. He turned to look back and saw his body laying on the desert floor, smoking, and his sparse clothing on fire.

"Bright Fire." His father said. "I warned you to run quickly."

He turned around. His father stood before a huge tunnel of white light, smiling. He opened his eyes. "Come my son, we have much to talk about in our new home."

"I'm afraid, Father."

His father smiled. "Sky Father waits for us. See?"

He pointed to the white tunnel of light and a huge warrior with a very kind face stood there, smiling at them. His right hand held a large eagle feather that glowed with a golden light. His left hand held a beautiful white owl. "He is very handsome, father."

"Yes. Come. Your mother is waiting for us too."

He felt like weeping. "She is..."

His father smiled even more broadly. "...Waiting for us. See?"

His mother stepped from the tunnel of white light and opened her arms to him. He wept for joy and raced to her, letting her hold him close to her bosom. He wept and wept and wept. His father came and held t hem both close. "We are tired of this desert, son. Let us go to the land where cold and ice, hot and dark are no more."

His father let go and he and his mother stepped into the tunnel of White Light.

WHAM!

Sammie stumbled uncertainly, almost losing his balance, letting the bow drop to the ground. It was no longer needed on this world or the next. He wiped at tears in his own eyes and smiled. He looked up into the skies and waved as what could have been two Indian braves rode a Sky Pony in the bright sunlight into the clouds.

I had a major issue with my computer this last several weeks after upgrading to Windows 11. I've fixed the major issues and will now be posting audio versions of my stories once more.

The first new one is now in the audio section: Windmills of the Heart.

A lovely story about a young woman who sees a far better world than she experiences and will not stop fighting evil until the world is at peace.

There's more, but don't want to give away the fun of it.

Also, the service provider for my site and blogs is still having issues with the order of my blogs, so everything is there every day, but maybe off a bit. Hopefully they'll resolve all those issues soon.

Enjoy.

John

When the air is gliding

Like soft fingers across your cheeks.

When the stars are falling

And begging you to peek.

 

There are the minders

Of the good that fill our souls

With Windmills of the Heart

To make us once more whole!

--- From Lovelight's Journal ---

***

"Make me!"

"No, you make me!"

"You're not big enough to make me!"

"And you're too short to make me!"

"Will you two grow up!" Lovelight hollered at the two jocks that were in each other's faces.

They both turned on her.

Like clones they hollered. "Make me!"

Lovelight, who was holding a bucket of ice water for the football heroes to douse themselves with, flung its contents over both of them.

The jocks sputtered and made faces, then like the silly kids they were, they both broke into laughter, then put arms around each other's shoulders and marched off the field back into the locker room, where Lovelight later learned they had beat up on one another when  one of them snapped the other with a wet towel.

"Jerks!" She muttered to herself.

"Pardon?" Her English teacher, Mrs. Towers asked, looking up from the book she had been reading to the class.

"I'm sorry, Mrs. Towers, I was just thinking about those two jocks who fought last night in the locker room with wet towels."

The classroom burst into laughter.

"Keep your thoughts elevated, Lovelight and the rest will follow." Her teacher had spoken.

Lovelight was struck by the profundity of the words for the rest of her classes, even through the horrid Biology class where she was supposed to dissect a frog, but secretly let it go, claiming it escaped. No one told on her, because as soon as she let hers go, a lot of the others did too, except for Chalmers and Spoke, who didn't give a rat's butt for anything that was alive.

She didn't give them as much thought as usual. She was too preoccupied with what Mrs. Towers had taught her earlier. "Keep your thoughts elevated." Never once thinking that perhaps she was being teased by the teacher and not taught at all!

***

She stood before the huge, deformed wooded door that opened into a flight of stairs that wound through endless corridors beneath the ancient structure. Her thoughts of childhood fled her as she opened that horrid door, the musty smell of the underworld rising, and the terror of what might lay in the dark awakened again.

Her best friend had vanished down there. She had seen him enter the door, and then shut it behind him. He had told her to wait. He was an agent for the government. A secret agent. His department dealt with supernatural phenomena and alien visitations...or encounters of the third kind as they were called by UFOlogists.

"Ben!" She whispered, hoping her voice would reach him, but knowing it probably wouldn't. The descending stairs were wide, the overhead ceiling high and the opposing walls narrow. Sound was trapped here and didn't travel far, muffled by the raw stone that had so many cuts to it that it deflected and muffled any sounds. She could barely hear her own footsteps as she descended.

Her vision opened up as she did and a soft radiance of gold and white light lit the path ahead, else she might never have seen the huge gap in the descent before her. She saw it, and then leaped across, hoping that Ben had seen it as well. He usually carried a maglite in his pocket for such ventures, but she couldn't know that for sure. Why had she let him go ahead of her? The Nine were not nice cookies to deal with.

And yes, they had tried to kill her. And yes, she had miraculously survived the encounters, but she had a different kind of protection than Ben. He had courage, and honesty. She had something hard to put a name or finger on. Her mother used to always be amazed when Lovelight would tumble from their backyard apple tree and never hurt herself. "You're like one of those damned cats, Lovelight. You always land on your feet. Unhurt!"

Her Mom and she would sometimes sit outside under the old crabapple tree, breathing in its sweet fragrance while honey bees meandered about the small garden, buzzing happily from one flower to the next, gathering pollen, then maybe stopping a moment to rub legs together and then flitting off again for a new flower to extract pollen from.

The soft breezes of the autumn skies would whisk past them, flinging strands of hair into their faces. They would laugh. Her mom's worry lines smoothing out so much that she looked like a young teenager. Her Mom never looked old to Lovelight, just older.

One day they were seated beneath the crabapple tree and Lovelight was very upset. One of her classmates had been run down by a drunken driver while they were biking home. The driver had lost control and driven up onto the sidewalk and killed her friend.

"It's unfair!" Lovelight cried angrily, slamming a fist into the grassy knoll she sat upon.

Her mother had smoothed her hair from her forehead, and then said. "We only see this side of the coin of life. The other side has a much broader vision than ours."

Lovelight had been reading through the Baghvad Gita in her history class, and eyed her Mom sternly. "Reincarnation?"

Her Mom hadn't confirmed or denied it. "What do you think?"

Lovelight had looked away. Something in her mother's eyes told her she was being tested in some way. She just wasn't sure on what. "I don't know what to believe or think. Most of the kids seem to be pretty much neutral towards any kind of religion at all, or if they do practice, they seem to be very sloppy about it."

Mom laughed. "It's easier to walk the path to hell, than redemption, sweetheart, that's why it's so well lit. The path to truth is a hard fought battle, and one that we must constantly wage war to win."

Lovelight hadn't grasped the imponderability of those words at the time, but as she descended after Ben, she cringed at the memories. She knew it was real. People did die. They did go on. But not always where they thought they would. Some clung to the Earth, fearing to let go. Fearing to make a move to free them from the grasp of mortality. Fearing to lose the touch of a loved one, the taste of a grape, the kiss of a friend, the grasp of power!

And it was the last one that had brought her and Ben into the cavernous space beneath the ground.

"This way!" She heard ahead of her, and she scrambled to catch up.

He stood framed in a new doorway, this one open already, and the source of a bright light that was creating a noir affect with Ben, who turned to smile at her. "Enjoying our cub scout exploration?"

She noted the weapon in his right fist. "You seem to be."

He shrugged. Which he usually did as a way of apologizing for his weapons, but he never stopped using them. "It's all nice to be spiritual and all like you Lovelight, but when a bullet's zinging for your heart, you better be wearing armor!"

She'd always laugh when he would go zing with his mouth, and then tap her on her heart, a huge grin on his face, like some of the puppies she saw at the pet stores.

"No one here."

He shook his head. "But they left traces."

He turned and descended into a larger room than the one above, which had also been stripped bare. This one had huge shelving and there were still some books on the shelves. Many had been torn and tossed to the floor; some burnt, smoke still lingering in the corners of the room, but most were gone. She could see the tracks of dust where they had been pulled down or away from the shelving.

She drew a finger across one shelf. The dust had to be at least an inch thick. "They must have taken the old ones."

"They wouldn't have it any other way." He said in a wry twist of a commercial.

She laughed, and then took his left hand. "Now what?"

"Now I call in the big boys and they come out with all the forensics tools."

"Will this still be here if we wait?"

He gave her a side-glance. She was right.

He shook his wavy blonde hair, causing his deep emerald eyes to sparkle with humor. It was his way of telling her "God only knows! They've managed to beat us every time before this." He snapped in irritation.

She nodded. She didn't blame him for his anger. The Nine were a powerful force of evil on the planet. While everyone was out politicizing about the rich one percent, the Nine were the masters who held the strings to the puppets everyone thought of as the richest people, when in fact they were only part of a vast network of expanding control that the Nine had created.

"Let's check anyway. Maybe we can find a clue."

They began probing the walls of the large chamber, working their way to the far wall, and then back again towards the stair well, where they had started from. They acted as checkers on each other; in case one missed something the other would surely catch it.

The door above them suddenly slammed shut.

Ben snapped on his maglite and shot its beam at the doorway above. Nothing. No one there, but they heard the sound of footsteps swiftly ascending.

"Not good." He remarked.

Then smoke began to filter into the room. Lots of smoke. Green smoke.

"Not good at all." He swore.

Lovelight and Ben searched stairwell walls on both sides, and were about to give up. The green smoke was almost to their level as it spilled thickly down the stairwell stairs, cascading like a liquid smoke to the floor and curling about their shoes.

A wisp caught in Lovelight's throat and she made gagging sounds. She hurriedly spit out what had gotten into her mouth, grabbing her throat protectively. Ben gave her a worried look, and bumped into the shelf nearest the stairwell. A grinding sound.

They both turned to see a new doorway appear.

Above them green smoke began to pour from the ceiling as well as the doorway.

"Well, Princess. Any mad ideas?"

"Reincarnate as a bird?" She quipped.

He grinned. "Great idea. How about we put it under our Christmas tree."

Then he dashed into the new opening, spearing ahead with his maglite, while she followed. They'd gone maybe ten yards along a narrow corridor about six feet high, causing Ben to have to duck his head constantly, so he didn't see the object ahead. She hadn't seen it either, but her intuition was burning hot as a flame.

"STOP!" She hollered.

He stopped. Looked up. Banged his head. "Damnit!" He cursed, and then he saw what she had seen. It had been flattened against the wall. So narrow and undefined that it would have been easy to pass it by. Exposed by Lovelight, the creature slid away from the wall, its semi-translucent body glowing now with a kind of crude dark green color.

"What in the hell is that?" Ben swore.

"Exactly." Lovelight answered.

It charged them, baring a mouthful of slimy fangs that extruded forth like giant syringe needles.

"Stop or I'll shoot!" Ben warned, and shot at the same time.

The creature gave him a stunned look, and then looked upwards, where a hole had appeared magically in the center of its forehead. It let out a wet sigh, and then collapsed to the floor.

"I said stop!" Ben told Lovelight as she looked at him.

She shook her head, then bent down and pressed a palm to the body of the creature. "It's not from here."

"Meaning California or..."

"Or." She answered.

Then behind them they heard an explosion.

"Run!" Ben yelled.

He grabbed her hand and they ran forwards as green smoke and searing flames blasted into view behind them.

***

A huge Doberman Pincer was digging into an overturned garbage can in a deserted alleyway. The throb of traffic on the street that fronted the alley was noisy, but nothing would disturb its hunger. It nosed through the trash, and then huffed in despair. Nothing.

Then the bricks to its left exploded outwards.

It spun around and snarled angrily, baring its teeth as Ben and Lovelight hurtled into view, then ran its way, as searing flames and green smoke burst into the alley.

"Wrooff!" Warned the dog!

Lovelight and Ben froze. Ben kept his weapon ahead of him.

Lovelight caught his hand. "Don't."

He didn't move.

She came around him, and then dropped to a knee. The huge dog growled, warning her.

"Hi fellow! You look hungry. Are you hungry?"

The dog eyed her uncertainly. It didn't feel an ounce of fear radiating from her. It felt something warm and soothing. It lowered its ears, and then raised them.

"You have such pretty eyes. I bet everyone tells you that." She told the dog.

He made a slight whining sound, and then lowered his tail between his legs.

"I won't hurt you." She promised, slowly extending a hand.

"Lovelight, those fingers don't come with a warranty, money back guarantee!"

"He's just scared..." She told him, not taking her eyes of the dog's eyes. "...Aren't you, honey?"

She sat down on the pavement and the dog growled again. It turned its head, but the alley was a dead-end. It looked back at her, baring its teeth again.

Ben raised his weapon, but held fire.

Lovelight patted her lap. "Come on, boy. Come on!"

The dog remained frozen in place, its teeth bared.

"Ben, you still got that jerky in your rear right pocket?"

"Lunch."

"Not today."

He sighed, and handed it over. She unwrapped the jerky slowly and carefully, making sure the dog wasn't startled by any sudden movements. It didn't growl, but it tensed, and then its nostrils caught the scent of the beef jerky. It sears shot up. Its tail shot out like a flag unfurling in the wind.

"Come here, boy. Nice jerky for you!"

The dog slowly relaxed, its nose working overtime at the scent of the jerky. It licked its lips, its hunger getting the better of it. Lovelight tore off a tiny chunk and very carefully tossed it several yards in the dog's direction. It gave her a startled look, then saw the jerky and leaped upon it, eating it as if hadn't had anything to eat in weeks.

"More, baby?" She said.

It turned around, licking its lips, trying to get more of the jerky into its throat that was now gone. Its eyes saw the huge piece in her hands. She gently laid it down in front of her. The dog looked up into her eyes, and then it slowly came forward, its eyes locked on hers. When it was close enough to snag the food it did, but it didn't move away. It just stood there.

"That's a good boy!" She said, then slowly reached her hand out and touched its head.

The dog looked up at her a moment, as if weighing her life in that moment, but as she continued to touch it and then gently rub it, its eyes softened, and its tail began to wag.

"You're such a good boy!" She told the dog.

It wagged its tail faster, then let out a tiny whine and dropped to its belly and rolled over, exposing its stomach to her. She looked over at Ben, who couldn't believe his eyes, and then she gently began rubbing its belly. The dog made tiny whining sounds of pleasure as she did so. Then it snapped around, and leaped at her.

Ben raised his gun to fire, but the dog wasn't attacking Lovelight; it was licking her face all over. She put her arms around it and hugged it as its body shook and shimmered with delight. She could feel tears coming to her eyes. Yes, there was evil in the world, but there was also goodness. Good things. Good creatures.

"Good boy!" She told the dog. "Good boy!"

Three things happened all at the same time.

Time stood still.

Red did nothing.

The Colonel passed right through the worm and tripped over a boulder in front of him.

Red grinned as the Worm kept right on coming at him, its mouth slavering with slime. "Man, whoever you guys are,  you're good. Really good. But not buying it!"

The Worm vanished.

The Colonel sat up, his face blank for a moment as he spotted Red seated on the floor, polishing the barrel of his weapon and whistling a tune. "Just what the hell do you think you're doing, soldier?"

"Waiting for the others to catch up with us."

"Through that....that wall!" The Colonel pointed at the huge slab cutting the corridor off from the others.

"Seems like the right thing to do, as it's not really there, sir."

Red stood up, kicked at the wall and his foot went through it, vanishing from sight a moment, before he pulled it back, and then turned to grin at the shocked face of the Colonel. "Whoever's pushing our buttons has a mighty good imagination. Reminds me of the games my brother and I would play at night before we went to sleep. Who can be most spooky? Only in our case, we're just the spooked."

Diggs stepped through the wall, his face emotionally blank. "That has got to be the weirdest thing this side of hell, which I'm beginning to suspect we're firmly heading towards."

The wall dissolved. The cracks in the floor vanished.

The Colonel stood there in shock, watching as his Forces strained to get back into their right minds after the shock they had been through. Claire and Barnes came running up.

"You two all right?"

Claire didn't answer. The Forces parted way as something unexpected hopped through them: Jiminy!

"Oh Mother Mary in Heaven!" The Colonel swore. "This can't be happening!"

"Oh, it's happening all right, sir." Claire grinned.

She turned and stretched her arms out. Jiminy hopped into them and she hugged him close and turned to face the Colonel. "I thought I was dreaming him, but he was right next to me while I slept."

"I'll vouch for that, Colonel." Barnes joined in. "Scared my britches off when I saw that creature next to her, its front arms wrapped around her neck.

Diggs grinned. "I'll vouch for that. Had to help her pull them back up again."

Barnes turned on Diggs. "Hey!

Diggs shrugged. "Two can play!"

Barnes gave him an appraising look, but said nothing more.

"Sir!" Milford said as he shoved through the nervous and frightened Forces gathered close to the Colonel and the women. "Something you gotta see."

Everyone made a path for the Colonel and Milford as they headed back the way Milford had raced from.

Jerod and Manuel took up point as they passed, both men tense.

Doctor Brevard was waiting for them when they reached a new opening in the corridor. "Look there." Milford pointed.

The Colonel stepped into the opening and gasped.

"What in God's name?"

Before the Colonel and the men and women forming behind him was a huge shining device of some kind with lettering of a kind that no one appeared to recognize. It gave off a gentle melodic sound and its blaze of light gave off soothing warmth, even though it wasn't warm to the touch.

The Colonel and his people swarmed about the device, kicking it, touching it, putting foreheads and palms against its surface.

"It must be over fifty yards tall." Doctor Brevard noted.

Jeffries, who was scanning the device, frowned and said. "These readings can't be right."

The Colonel finally returning to some sense of normality again after all the craziness looked at his people. "This ain't no circus, folks. I want a squad at both ends of this cavern, ready and armed. Red, you and Jeffries with me."

"What about us, sir?" Manuel and Jerod asked.

"I want you also."

They fled the chaos that had become the center of a storm of investigation and wonder as men, women and devices moved into the cavern to examine the artifact. Milford watched the Colonel exit, and turned to Doctor Brevard.

"Those symbols look familiar."

"I'm an expert on languages, Doctor Milford, and I don't recognize any of that."

Milford gave Doctor Brevard a cunning smile. "Maybe you should have read more science fiction when you were growing up."

Doctor Brevard gave Milford a look of disdain. "You might fool the Colonel with all your fake Doctorates, but you don't fool me Milford."

With that he turned away and stomped off.

Milford felt someone near him and turned. Diggs was grinning at him. "I don't like that bastard either."

Milford didn't respond at first, and then he said. "Oh, he doesn't bother me at all. He's just an ant trying to be a queen."

Milford followed a drone as it scanned the sides of the artifact, making notes as he walked behind it.

Diggs shrugged. "What is it with eggheads and egos anyway?"

The Colonel looked back at Diggs and the others, and then stopped.

"What's up, Colonel?" Barnes asked, as she and Claire settled back against a wall, one eye on the activity by the artifact, and the other on him.

Red set his backpack down, and then sat beside it. He pulled out detonators and began polishing them. Jeffries sat next to him.

The Colonel sighed. "Look, don't ask me why, but I trust you people."

Manuel and Jerod came closer, but kept their eyes at point.

"Those eggheads are too full of themselves to see the truth." Red pointed out.

"I agree." Jeffries added, scanning the data on his scanner. He held it up for the Colonel to read. "Nothing. Nothing at all."

"What do you mean?"

"Whoever or whatever is perpetrating these events on us...they're not present, nor are they using any known physical force to exert the phenomena we've been experienced."

"Are you saying we're seeing ghosts?"

"Yeah. Pretty much."

Barnes shivered. Manny gave her a reassuring smile, and then went back to point again.

"Colonel, now that we've found this artifact, maybe we'll have better idea of what we're facing."

"More like not..." Red butted in.

Barnes gave him a frown.

"Just saying." Red said, undaunted by her look. "I don't think we're facing anything. Never have been. Probably never will."

"Your mouth to God's ears." The Colonel said solemnly.

"Look!" Jeffries said, putting his device away. "That artifact is a source of more energy that we have in our entire arsenal right now, and yet it's not measurable in any kind of quantitative way. How is that even possible?"

"Because it's not really there." Red spoke up with a grin. "Oh, I mean the artifact is real, but everything else...bogus!"

The Colonel eyed them sternly. "So how in the hell are we supposed to deal with ghosts and phantom energies when they block our path every time we seem to be on a roll?"

"That's the point, Colonel." Red commented. "I don't think they expect us to stop. But they also don't expect us to continue. It's our test."

"The old lab rat thing again."

"Pretty much." Red agreed.

Jeffries nodded. "Red, remind me never to play chess with you."

"Too late, you already have."

"Oh, yeah. Right."

The two soldiers barked with laughter.

Diggs came running up. "Colonel, you gotta stop them from killing each other!"

The Colonel rushed besides Diggs as he shot for the new cavern. They reached it and dashed inside. Doctor Brevard and Milford were face to face, a hand on their side arms as the screamed in each other's faces.

"It is!"

"You're nuts, Milford!"

"I may be nuts, but at least I know I'm nuts, Brevard!" Milford blasted back.

"Doctors!" The Colonel growled loudly.

Both men, startled, broke apart, but kept hands on their side arms.

"What in the name of Mother Mary is going on here?"

"This Master of Doctorates, idiot and dumb head." Doctor Brevard accused, pointing at Milford. "He's accused me of being small minded and ignorant. I refuse to believe his idiotic conjecture!"

Milford's face went intensely red and he whipped his side arm out. Diggs kicked it from his grasp. Milford turned on Diggs. "He deserves to die. His idiocy is going to get us all killed!"

"What in the name of Mother Mary is going on, Doctors?" The Colonel swore again.

Both men backed up a bit from each other and turned to face him.

"Doctor Brevard thinks this is the source of the emanations causing the Big One."

"And I'm right too. It's got all the energy signatures of Dark Matter!"

Milford snorted. "Yeah. Just like Donald Duck wears a Superman cape and leaps over tall buildings. Come on, you moron, if it were Dark Matter we'd all be dead now!"

"Not if it was harnessed properly!" Doctor Brevard snarled.

Then the Colonel looked at Doctor Brevard. "What's this really about, Doctor?"

"We came on this mission to find the source of Dark Matter. Mission accomplished. Now we should return home and reveal the discovery. With this much power we could destroy our whole solar system!"

The Colonel's eyes narrowed suspiciously. "Doctor, whose side are you on anyway?"

Doctor Brevard suddenly realized what he had given away with his outburst. "I meant merely that with this discovery before us, we can now effectively block another Big One from happening."

Milford stuck his face into that of Brevard's. "You idiot, these are not the emitters."

"He's right, Colonel!" Jeffries said with a gasp of air.

The Colonel turned as he and Red joined them.

"Explain!"

"The reason why we can't get any measurable energy output is because this here artifact, it's not a source of power, but a reflector of it."

Red nodded. "I'd bet Jeffries' chocolate bars on it, sir."

Jeffries gave Red a nasty look. "You been stealing my chocolate bars again?"

"Just one."

"Attention!"

Jeffries and Red snapped to attention.

The Colonel gave them a nod, and then turned to Doctor Brevard's. "Until I can sort this out, Diggs, you'll keep the good Doctor company. Barnes you keep Milford company. And please, make sure they don't wake us up. We're all going to need a lot of rest after all of this settles down."

That's when Milford went out of his mind.

"No! We can't leave now!"

Barnes put a hand on his arm as he rushed the Colonel. He stopped. "I recognize the symbols, Colonel."

Doctor Brevard gave Milford a scowl of disapproval. "And from what fairy tale have you extracted this bit of knowledge?"

Milford ignored him. "When I was working on my first Doctorate I saw this program on TV about ancient cultures. There was this explorer...James..."

"Churchward. Sir James Churchward." Barnes butted in. Excited. "He believed that the Lemurians and Atlantis settled the Americas.

"Not just the Americas." Milford went on, ignoring the outburst.  "He believed that the early cultures were helped by their brothers with shining faces, as they called them. Brothers who visited them in vehicles that rose on fire."

The Colonel's face went blank for a moment, and then he let out the air he had been holding and eyed Milford closely. "You saying this artifact is alien technology?"

"No, sir, I am not. I don't believe that at all. I recognize the symbols as being that of a civilization that even the Greeks knew about."

Claire's face brightened. "Atlantis!"

"Exactly." Red commented with a grin. "Way down...below the ocean...where I want to be...she may be. Atlantis!"

The Colonel swiped at the sweat which had been building on his forehead. "If what you're saying is true, then we're not the first civilization to come this way."

Red grinned. "Maybe the last though."

Jeffries kicked him in the shins.

Red jumped back in. "I mean, maybe not the last to figure it all out."

The Colonel looked at Red, then at the others.

"Then the buck stops here, gentlemen and ladies. We don't budge until we solve this."

"What?" Doctor Brevard shot back. "We have to go back, the worlds depending on us."

The Colonel turned on Doctor Brevard. "No, your world does. Mine wants to find the truth!"

He nodded to Diggs and Barnes. "See to them!"

Then he walked away, hands behind his back, head down as he considered the weight of all that they had been through and learned.

Claire started to follow him, and then turned to look at Jeffries and Red, who were setting up a deck of cards. "Use a third hand?"

"Always." Red answered with a girn.

"What shall we offer up for stakes?" She asked.

Jeffries smiled in such a way that it made Claire shiver. "The world!"