The Complete stories of: The Eldritch Carvings

The Eldritch Carvings


Mythos of D. L. Siluk





Selected weird and Strange Stories
By Dennis L. Siluk



Poeta Laureado de San Jerónimo de Perú












Copyright© Dennis L. Siluk, 2006
The Eldritch Carvings
Edited by: Benjamin Szumskyj
[Mythos of D.L. Siluk]





Contents:

Back of Book:

Reviews
Books by the Author

Poems included in the stories:

Nightmare
Moon-Path
Life on a Finger
Love and Butterflies
The Demon’s Ark
The Witch Speaketh
The Raw Arctic
The Great Tentacles



Stories in the book:

Indicates notes*
Dates indicate when written

Introduction by Rosa Peñaloza

Introductory Story: The Manticore of Sumer [6/18/2006]

1—Elephants in the Sky (Mali, Africa) [3/26/2005] 635
2—Project: Space Tomb (Peru) A four Part Story [July 2005]
3—Veteran Mirage (Chicago and Minnesota)* [4/2/2005]

4—The Portrait of: Mr. Augusto S. Moaio (Lima, Peru) [10/2004]
5—The Pallid Case of: Nicolai Stein (Paris to Nantucket) [2004]
6—The Stone Tunnel (St. Paul, Minnesota) [10/2004]
7—The Fiends of Yogyakarta (Indonesia) [2004]
8—Kisses in Antigua, Guatemala (Central America)* [12/23/2003]
9—Black Bubble (The Dread of the Yukon ((Arctic)) [3/24/2005]
10—The Great Tower at Kura (Asia)) Black Sea)) [4/1/2005]
11—Colored Clouds over Beijing (China) [2003]
12—The Cephalopoda: Queen of the Arctic*(Alaska) 6/29/2002]
13—Lost Canyon* [12/11/2005]
14—Along the Docks of Havana [2003]

*Stories in most cases written after or during the author’s visits to the locations the stories take place.


Projected:

*Accepted for book





Drawings

1—Galaxy
2—Earth and Moon
3—Space Observatory
4—North Side of Moon
5—Sedna
6—Space Probe
7—Planet Cibara
8—The Mu-Man
9—Yogyakarta
10—Tikal
11—Arctic Scene: Black Bubble
12—Arctic Scene: Black Bubble
13—Tower at Kara
14—Queen of the Arctic
15—Planets
16—Bosnia Snake Man



◊





Nightmare

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He lives within the deep
Where others never sleep—
Monstrous fathoms below,
Below, where lava rivers flow,
And crowding waters gush.
He is the nightmare demon
Lo, with a flat un-traversable form—
Laying in a bottomless tomb,
Un-doomed, haply waken,
Awaiting ones slumber.


Note: This poem was inspired by the CAS’s picture, Nightmare; Written by the author right after the purchase of the original picture From Tom Strausky, who purchased it through G. de la Ree, about [?] 1980, from his estate? Published on the Internet Site the Eldritch Dark; and in the book “The Macabre Poems of Dennis L. Siluk.”






The Short Peculiar and Weird Stories
Of D.L. Siluk


[Introduction] In “The Eldritch Carvings,” Mr. Siluk, mixes his imaginative, inventive, metamorphosed mysterious—dark, menacing and sacrificial as they may be—into a pot of black crickets and he stirrers them well—and at this point he brings them to you in the form of exoticism and remoteness—, framed in the spirit (an unseen force that that tries to invade the mind) in which intended. Again Siluk brings to the observer: relative offerings seldom seen in short fiction; this is in essence, an uncanny-ebbing of writing of the unbegotten tombs, etching, and carvings of wingless beings, if you will: on earth, within the crust of the earth, and beyond the stratosphere of the earth. It is haunting, and testing reality: what it used to be, that is.

The author has provided nineteen captivating stories; from the dark-side of the moon, you might say, of horrific-suspense, mixed with a few poems to adjust the nervous system, and its moods. I do hope you do not have nightmares.

Rosa Peñaloza
Translator/writer


The Manticore of Sumer
[The Second Soul of Queen Shub-ad: Parts II & I]

[2750-2500 BC: Sumerian]





Advance: The clay tablet of Sumer was made under the third dynasty of Ur, during a time of Mesopotamian bureaucracy and record keeping. Ur was a city-state of Sumer, and a sumerologist had found among its ruins several hundred such clay tablets. The tablets in question reflected the careful and detailed administration of diverse functions in the kingdom, especially the sacrifices, and this particular one about a treasure hidden in a canal at Ur. Clearly the cuneiform script told of the exact location. It was a small neat script, but an outstanding specimen of cuneiform calligraphy thought the good professor who found it (from Troy University); it was often the scribes job to take several small ones and combine them into an individual account, but this one was a single one, larger than the others, yet small for a big hand; it didn’t have to cover a whole years harvest as many did only a tressure. And this is where the story begins:



Chapter One
Patience from the City


Life as we all know, is bitter-sweet, and once done, once said, so it is for eternity; wipe it off the scrolls or tell the jury to overlook it, once done, it is done. There was no June sun in Lima, Peru, cool shady clouds seeping from the ocean inward, sitting over the city like fingers hanging down, likened to a canopy, willow branches. The water from the ocean looked like a green transparent mountain. I stood up on the rocky formation by the coast. The great world beyond troubled me, disturbed my joyfulness, my father had passed on, died a blissful solitude death. I stood there looking out into the ocean as if I was summoning it up, half dreamy; loneliness had seeped into me, sadness, and undertones of it: once more the wisdom of my father struck me, and all the years he laid it upon me. ‘I doubt man will ever find but a few moments on earth of perfect rest,’ Endlessly my father’s will and these words came to mind. He had large academia of them. Next, came the sounds of the hissing sea that flooded my brain like an engine overworking.
I was well accustomed to my little house in Miraflores, Lima, Peru, but my father persuaded often me to be by his side in Huancayo, beyond the Andes a few hundred miles away. The noise of the sea, too imperative to be ignored, assured me of why dad wanted to have his office in the Navados, behind the city—the ceaseless sounding city of Lima; stress free I do believe for him, as Huancayo offered, and became his objective.


Chapter Two
The Lower World of Sumer


“Now, as the Golden Cuneiform Clay Tablet (so it came to be known as), it was the gemstone of Sumer! This he clearly regarded as the utmost of his riches. On it was engraved a code, which the old professor could only read.

“In the old Sumerian belief it was held that there were gods that were once kings of Sumer (superhuman beings; angelic renegades), and they hid a treasure—but more important, the method used in writing (or speaking) as indicated on the tablets were most important, it could command the old demigods of the underworld to appear, should one go through a ritual.
On the tablet, which, as you know now, is carved into the image of a square of sorts, both sides are cultivated with such words. As he had told folks about this: he’d often rise and pace the floor. A great fear for him was to lose this treasure; but I was in some strange way relieved when Simon gave me, just before he died—gave me the tablet. The day he died he was calm and placid. I said very little to him that day, but waited as he asked, then suddenly, out of nowhere he gave me the tablet.
If there had been any possibility of danger to him, or me he had shown none to be present at the time. Mr. Anticuario, my father, returned home late that evening, he resumed his seat as usual in the living room; he placed before me the tablet. I leaned forward as he showed it to me.
On a lining of purple satin, it lay as if it was a ruby, almost as big as the palm of my Gloxinia hand (Jack’s girlfriend). He did something to it; it was not its natural shape, carved it perhaps. Not sure what tool he used. Blood was stained on a corner of it, the colour of blood that is.
I’m sure this could not be a mistake to anyone consciously looking at the tablet: on it the figures were plain, cut with exquisite precision, as he had told me they were long ago, I used a magnifying glass to search it out, one that my father took from his jacket pocket.
When I had fully seen it, He turned it over so it rested on its back, where half the tablet was blank. The reverse was no less wonderful than the other side, just half blank, and you could see it was carved more as if it was cut into the clay. He resumed to speak to me about its legend, its powers, and its treasure:
“You see, the marks, or symbols on the upper part of the tablet, compose the amount of the treasure, with its determinatives. You know, or you all should know I suppose, that Sumerian culture used marks, dashes, lines and so forth of “thought’’; they didn’t use papyrus as did the Egyptians. On the other side of the clay tablet, is the prayer, or summons to the demigods of the lower world, its chant:
“It may be beyond belief, but it is true nonetheless, the old wonder-workers knew the truth about the lower world. My father smiled at me often, lovingly, when he spoke about this, and then he’d resume”
“We need of course a spirit filled heart, or in plain English, ‘patience,’ will do. So in other words, this stone, or clay tablet has an element to control the Lower Ancient World of Sumer, or at least to summons them for assistance, a porthole for them to fly through you could say; and a horde of gold, or perhaps jewels hidden in some canal in Ur.
My father closed the box he had stored it in, and gave it to me with the tablet in it, and went to his room. When he was to return he was to resume his conversation with me, but I knew what it was going to be about, he had done this several times before, perhaps so I wouldn’t forget, or perhaps so he wouldn’t, he’d seat himself right here, at this table and he’d go on:
“That tablet, has a mystic chant written into it (in the centre of it is the finishing lines; which only can be gotten to by opening it up, and in its hollow centre you will also find—along with the end lines to the chant—something called a drifting soul; King Gilgamish, used this chant himself, used it to subdue the kingdoms around him with. That is to say, in one case, when he had fought against Kish (in present day Iraq, city dating back to before the Great Flood, he used his influence with the Lower World, they assisted him, and the city fell quickly into his hands. And then he rebuilt the city, with the demigods help. In my father’s words ‘I need to work out the chant and the act of this source of resurrection.’ That is to say, he wanted to be able to summons the Lower World, a control element here, and perhaps a power instinct I realize. I kept the Tablet within a safe place after he died, whence no one could find it; trichologists, or friends of his to be exact, not even the museum inspectors could find it.”

Three Souls

“His ‘cosmological body’? What do you mean, by cosmological? Jack. What does it indicated?” There was heaviness in Gloxinia’s voice. As she had asked that question which surprised me a little, my girlfriend; but my father would have smiled at it so I did, and accepted it as a sort of tolerant parental gesture, it kind of pushed its way out through her sunshine face; then I spoke:
“Ah yes, the cosmological body, subsequent to the time I speak of, which is an accepted fact of modern theology, anthropology, in Sumer, which had its rise with gifted individuals, each king had to perform an unthinkable task (unthinkable for normal human being that is), of having thirty to fifty organism with the temple priestess, these kings were of course demigods, had to be, as was Gilgamish, and his forefathers. Thus, at will they could climax forever you might say: to a woman, a wish come true, to a normal human being who is married to a female receiver, a nightmare, should the king ask for her any certain evening; she surely would never forget the evening. In essence, they were irresistible you might say. But as I was about to say, my father’s cosmological body, what did I mean by saying that was just this: he could transfer his body whithersoever he chose, by this disbanding and reincarnation of atom brake up. And as a result, he chose to visit the underworld, the Lower world, as you may call it my lovely Gloxinia. But he was never capable in finding neither the treasure nor the chant to summons Hell’s best—the end part that is. He feared to open the clay table, saying in essence: it would be his end, and perhaps that is what brought on the heart attack, he cracked the seams of the tablet as you all can see: who is to say for sure. I myself have the capability of referring my body, but not in particles, like my father. He did it by the way of ancient beliefs, believing in three souls, and magical chants.
“Each soul possessed an absolutely independent existence. Free to move at its own will, it can enter into the heaven of God, or the Hell of Lucifer, or converse with the gods, the demons of the Underworld, of before the Great Flood. This is the first soul. The second, has substance and form, and can become animalistic in nature, or not; it has power to leave its abode, when you die, it can even leave the tomb, and come back, visit or revisit the old places it left, like a ghost…even talk with the old souls, the other souls, or loved ones. Then there was the third soul, spiritual intelligence or spirit filled. It had light; untouchable light and shape, the shape of the body…(the pious element of the makeup I do believe) we must not forget we still have the man himself, and his power and strength; thus, now making him complete. And to add to this, was the shadow that went with the body attached to the heart, where all life comes and goes.
“Henceforward, with all this in mind, and my father accepting this as fact, and he did, there are many possibilities: and let me stress, he did also have an unimpressionable will to go along with this. He often told me when he looked into water he could see his image wherever he was thinking of being, at that point, should he will any soul of his, or part of his soul, to go there, it would; and should he will his whole being and all its forces to collaborate, it would be personified, and he would not be displeased where he’d end up—complete. That said, genetically speaking, he was a ting supernatural, you need only ask Shub-ad, she knows, he lasted sexually with her—so he said twenty-times.


Chapter three
To the Lower World’s Secrets

My father went to the Underworld to find out about the pre-Sumerians in particular the chant and the treasure, and he was told by Queen Shub-AD herself ((first soul ((Shub-ad: had many human sacrifices lavished on her, in the bottom of her grave pit it was crowed with bones, butchered where they stood; also in the tomb was silver cow’s heads, a pair of silver heads of lionesses, all striking in its craftsmanship, and imagination: and of course the first triangular harp; discovered at Ur, 2500 BC), whom came back and told me, me in so many words, ‘…there were migrates in this land called Sumer until it was sufficiently formed to offer reasonable agriculture and competence, nomads who moved from one place to another, looking for fertile soil, so it appeared. Mankind then was created for breeding (so it seemed), eating, having a few worn garments, they walked with limbs on the ground, they ate herbs with their mouths like sheep, they drank water wherever they could find it…’ so he said, she said. A part of her soul was left to linger the earth, he found it, another part in the Underworld, the third part encased in the centre of this tablet, with the chant. We of course are talking about the second soul of Shub-ad.
“He also told me, the animal soul of Shub-ad, was locked up in a vault of the hollow of the clay tablet, whom can lead you to the treasure.
“What really took place was this, or so I have come to this conclusion that: the Queen wanted to resurrect her first soul with her second and third, thus a full resurrection, and my father was to help in this, and in the process, she gave him a terrible extension of magic, its power killed him, her second soul did the work, it was locked up so long that when it got free through the cracks of the tablet and the partial chant, it turned into its animalistic form, I believe a Manticore of some sort, a female lion’s body of some type, with her hands as paws, iron looking sabre tooth monster, and attacked my father. When he died he had looked chew over: every colour under the sun, he was: choked up purple, read blood all over him, green and yellow skin, nothing on him was a normal colour. Whatever magical formula he used, it gave life to the creature, which was then transmitted. If she now connects with her third soul, the soul of light, it could have a positive effect; should it not it will run ramped; should they all connect, it is unpredictable. So I have to choose between learning the chant in the tablet, reading the scripture on the tablet, and hoping to find the treasure, and an unfastened mad animalistic soul, in the form of a ghost.
This soul that is free from the god’s, and wanders the earth until the end of time will not go willingly. There need be no limits to her objectives. It is my belief she laid dormient for all these centuries in the tablet tomb, waiting for my father to set her free—or anybody for that matter—and he did. So the chant is mixed with her guarding it. But no matter what she is, she is gone, the chant is free for us to seek and inspect—perhaps only a part of the chant is available, or none within its tablet vaults, and the world, the demonic world would help us once we acquired this full chant? If indeed she is gone, and if so, perhaps the end part of the chant is also. Her first soul remains in the underworld—I know that for sure. What her intentions are we know not, but her first soul, in the underworld would have some kind of instinct to her next moves—should we seek and ask, if indeed that is possible; we or they could even communicate by dreams.
“Should we find her grave, that in itself would be a central point of contact, now comes the crown of the issue, the purpose of our acquiring or attacking her: that immense tressure left in some hidden place in the canal of Ur, she would know; plus, once having influence over the demonic world—if indeed that is possible, we could help connect all three souls together, she’d once more be a living queen on earth, 4500-years old, with a body and soul intact; a great scientific achievement that I’d not want to boast unless I could harness her. (All six guests at the table sat emotionless, doubt and darkness in their eyes; a mummied look.) To this end, we seek the Queen, use her body to summons the souls that wonder the earth, linger in the Underworld. For years I suspected my father of this, having access to the Nether World, I thought was not real, though it is. I was patient, and waited to gather all the facts from my father, and his teachings. And now I have many of those facts and options to look at.




Chapter Four
The Sumerian Hymn


“It was the second soul of the Queen that took the Sumerian Hymn, the chant,” I had told the group, and Florencia had asked about the resurrection, ‘…is there not but one resurrection! I mean that is what the Bible says?’ And my answer was as is, for a human, it was final, one resurrection of the body and soul; but in the uncommon world, the spirit world, the supernatural realm, there are plenty of deep-rooted dawns or horizons, a magical spell can sweep across great landmasses, or rivers, and inspire silence of a dead soul to life: who knows what is possible.
“It thus, is given to me to comprehend what is to be and far-thinking and what to do with this high-souled woman of antiquity, that paces the earth as a Manticore, ready to devour whomever, however, whenever: who holds perhaps my secret, if not many secrets of treasures and the underworld.
“I don’t expect Queen Shub-ad’s spirit (animalistic soul) to come willingly, lest we convince her the connecting of her other two will make her whole, for every woman would like a second chance under the sun to find love, is this not in a woman’s heart to do so. No matter what has happened before or after, a woman’s heart is never sealed for love.
We must be very careful, for you surely we all know this was a woman who could raise an army with the wave of her hand, or have a temple built with the nudge of her beautiful head. Times of old may be gone, but they are not forgotten for those who have lived them, and I’m sure pleasure to restore is in the making.”
“I fear—I fear such a capture could be our deaths!!” Said Manual Zipida, sitting at the table across from Gloxinia, Mary and Florencia. As he spoke he seemed to be stirred, his eyes had a cryptic look in them, no mortal sight. And then the eyes filled up with shed tears of great emotion. The very soul of a woman we were going to try and capture, take it and try to harness it, consequently, he sat back shook his head and listened, entrenched into his chair, as if to say: what do we do with it if we get it? “I can see her with my second sight, she is very alone, in a silent temple in Ur, dreaming of something, she has the tale of the Manticore, the great saber teeth of the ancient lions, and great paws, a beautiful head. The land under is calling her, but she fears to go to it. She sees us, as she hides from the sweet winds and cool agitated desert air. Perhaps I can be her kindred spirit, someone kindred anyhow, like her own, we maybe can merge for a moment, long enough to find out what her intentions are and what she’s done thus far.”

We all sat silent as Manual sought his powerful interpretation of her purpose, the loftiness other thoughts. It seemed out of his mouth came a flowing of a musical cadence, even his tone was strange: I could read his mind, and he was reading the Queens soul’s thoughts, in its nature it sought its other souls, as a mother to its daughters, the rest of the feeling captured was of hope. Her soul was trying to tunnel its way through the gloomy temples and caverns of the death. And I asked Manual, ‘what was she doing now besides the communion seeking of her other souls: soul-to-soul, so their breaths could mingle in the same air, that is what she seeks, and some other hidden agenda I can’t make out, but I see you in it.’ She was now at the pantheon of the Sumerian gods. Her noble prayers, chants were a vibrant musical cadence of some kind of internal force, likened to a great instrument that summons a deeper power. But what had she down since her release two weeks ago? That was weighing on my mind?


Chapter Five
The Killings

For myself, I was like in a trance, when I heard what she had done, was doing, and my eyes being part of her vision quest; saw what she down in a vision, as Manual sucked her thoughts out, and I his. Whom was this new radiant being, soul of a lost queen, existence out of a mist, a spirit out of a dark corner of a hollow tablet. She had taken the wings of her soul and few from Peru, where my father was in Huancayo, to Lima, where I had lived, and like a whale, or spawning tuna, she found her way back home, to her ancient land of Sumer, where archeologists had dug her remains up years before. (They all like to remove them, but in doing so, they leave the haunting residue; all in the name of civilized Archeology.) The high culture of Sumer was perhaps 3500 BC; she was not yet born then, but the gods of Sumer were; they were the Titans of Crete, the god’s of Egypt, all went to Sumer eventually. They were the offspring, the hybrids of the Angelic Renegades of the time of Enoch.
What did she do after my father’s? She looked for her bones, her residue, under the shade of a willow-tree. Once in Lima again, she had gazed into the eyes of a child, her soaring and bent spirit was indeed in a revelation to the child, who saw a deadly Manticore ready to feast on her: she—the queen Manticore, as the child moved away, her joy and rapture was supreme! She devoured it like a giant snake would devour giant rodents, with one leap. It was not so different than the sacrifices 4500-years ago she felt. The folks of Lima, all held their child’s hands firmly, to go on with their daily discourse:
“We can perhaps contact the other two parts of her soul, it will take some astronomical calculations,” said Mary Garcia. It was why I called her to my house, to see if it was possible with this true orientation I was having, possible to use astrology in this quest.
But let me continue with the Beast part of the Queen, the second soul, the Manticore. The child was only the first day, and as unsusceptible as it sounds, nevertheless, I will continue, day-by-day if need be. It was by this means, rip and tar, and devour the Manticore intensified her feeding, or feeling for the need of flesh.
Dead hearts were found in empty tombs throughout Lima, Peru, men, women, all died with a mystery behind them; a magic mystery. They corresponded exactly with the time period my father died, and the tablet was given to me, and this meeting.
“In such times as these we need supernatural wisdom, a thunderbolt would help. There are only loose ends to tie up I do believe, and if we can capture it, all the better, and now that I’ve learned what I’ve learned, I have no intentions to gather her other souls—the more I think about it—save, we all become a party to more dead bodies. We must do this fast, while she is at her own gravesite, which I think she is now. We must recapture her, and put her back into where she came from.
“Now as to this tablet, perhaps we can use its magic later, or in capturing her, it has some principles of darkness to it.



Chapter Six
The Candle of Life


We all believed something had to be done, just what it was, was not clear. To be honest, just the thinking of the forthcoming ordeal with the Queen’s Second Soul, was terror, it put all of us in a state of terrorism. But she had killed, and not only once but several times in two weeks. Until you’ve actually lived through it, it is hard to express in words how terror works, it has to be experienced, it manifests its self inside you, unknown danger, which is known only by the soul, the whole nature of it is different.
“We all remained sitting around the table with high spirits, thinking, off and on even some enthusiasm cheeped in, speculative moods came over us. Coffee and coke at our sides, potato chips, some popcorn. Surely this was natural to-night we had to engaged ourselves with the spiritual dead, and summons the second soul of the Queen to us, or go to her: we didn’t have a real plan though, I mean, if she really came then what. Perhaps we were thinking of the thrill more than the consequences. Once we did this, she’d know who and where we were, although she knew of me already.
As we looked, and looked at the Queen’s sculpture, read the chant on the tablet, it was magnificent, a tiger cat of some great size, with her beautiful head appeared in the mirror across from me, behind the backs of the girls. Her mouth was open wide; her claws were stained with blood. My colleges saw me in amazement, and turned about, and then they saw her also, she motioned me to step back from my seat, and I did—not sure why, and I saw murder in her eyes, tears were dropping from the cheeks of Florencia, Mary and Gloxinia; Manual, covered his eyes with his palms, wiping them several times, and jumped up and ran to the kitchen. The girls were kind of frozen in place. I gripped my way around the table, staring into the mirror, but I stumbled and fell and when I did, I was unconscious, for when I awoke, it was all dark in the house, accordingly, I opened up the curtains, let in the morning air and sunlight. The storm I thought was over, and even said: thank god the night has passed, then I went back to the table quickly to see the girls: merciful god I said, pain in my face, I knew, I sensed it, sick at heart, all lay on the table face down, in terror, impenetrable terror in their eyes, their necks were broken, all my companions, necks broken, and on the kitchen floor, gazing upward was Manuel, hands over his face, trying to protect his eyes from the claws of the Manticore I expect, and his guts laying open on his chest. Then I sat down, to write this letter, and I fear, the words I have will never be good enough to describe what happened, for the scene was undescriptive: plus, I will never be allowed to make it to the hospital I fear: the mirror has eyes, the candle of life will soon be out of me: I’ve just noticed a hole in my chest.”


6/18/2006 dated to Ben S.


The Manticore of Sumer
[Attack by the Man-Eater: Part II]




Chapter Seven
Along San Jeronimo Creek



[2006, summer] When I started to walk down to the car, the Huancayo sun was shinning brightly, and the air was full of happiness of mid-winter in this mountainous country just beyond the Andes. I was about to depart, Enrique Herrera’s wife, Mini (my future brother-in-law’s house where I was staying) came down tucking in her blouse, to his automobile and, after giving me a bear hug and wishing me well on my journey back to Lima, said to her husband, Enrique, still holding the steering wheel—tightly gripped— as she held the door open, said to her husband:
“Remember you got to pick up the little one at noon. It doesn’t look like it will rain, no clouding in the sky.” Here he smiled, and added to her comment, “It will only be a quick ride to the bus stop, don’t worry, perhaps twenty minutes each way, but maybe I got time to show Jack an archeological site outside of town, it’s only 9:30 AM, the bus doesn’t leave till noon.” (There I’d catch the bus back to Lima, the funeral was over for all my friends: Manuel, Mary and Florencia: now Gloxinia’s was over also; my intentions were now to go back to Lima, and perhaps to the United States, where I had visited some in the past, and had some friends, Brynna Storm, was a friend of a friend, I had met her once at the Chicago Metropolitan Museum, she had studied much in the area of Sumer, as much as to be called a sumerologist I would think.)
“You will not be late,” asked Mini again; Enrique just smiled as I got into the car. I waved my hat out the window, as we drove off, Enrique’s daughter was standing by Mini, Ximena.
Enrique, shouted with an absolute, “Lets Go!” and hitting the accelerator of the car, we quickly drove out of town to San Jeronimo de Tunan, about twenty-five miles outside of town. After clearing the city of Huancayo, I took a good look at him, and asked him to stop:
“Tell me Enrique, what is the hurry and big secret?”
He traversed himself, as he answered with lack a of seriousness:
“San Jeronimo Creek!” Then he looked at his watch on his wrist, his eyebrows going upward a little, looked at me with his gleeful eyes, and a shrug of his shoulders, “We got plenty of time.”
I sat back in the car seat, merely motioning to him to go ahead. He started off quickly, as if he needed all the time in the world. Suspiciously, the car started to spit and sputter, the hood seemed like it was about to open, but it didn’t; I looked around in alarm somewhat, I knew I had to get back to the bus station, at least by 11:30 AM, it was now 10:00 O’clock. I had told only Enrique the truth about the murders, and myself, whom almost died in the quest of the Manticore; I mean, who else would believe me that a live Manticore was unfastened in the city of Lima, Peru, and could transform itself through the reflection of a mirror, especially by calling it by way of a magical chant. They’d have me undergo a long, very long-term of psychological examinations.
The area in this local was mostly mountainous, in a valley called: the Mantaro Valley, somewhat of a plateau in this particular spot. As we drove, I saw the road that looked familiar, the one that went into the creek vicinity; it had a sharp turnoff from the valley. I always liked this area, it looked so inviting, I didn’t’ want to offend Enrique, but I needed to know what the whole thing was about.
“I got to drive down this road, and we’ll be at the Creek and I’ll tell you what (finally I thought),” this somewhat freed my curiosity, but I knew not to ask any questions, he would tell me soon.
We got out of the car, and he asked me, implored me not to go to Lima. He seemed as if he wanted to tell me something else but couldn’t get it out, that in itself frightened me; but each time he talked, it seemed like he was talking to himself, as he paced by the creek; I tried to get more information out of him, what was the issue, but his mind shifted here and there.
The lead definitely rested with him, for although he had to speak, when he did, he mentioned in passing of a crude nightmare he had, and as he spoke he looked at his watch, hoping I suppose time would fly and he’d keep me here, where he felt I would be safe.
He looked at me with a pale face, frightened in a way, he was jumpy, nervous, he walked up along side of the creek, where his father-in-law used to own some land for making mud bricks for the locals. I followed and kept asking him why he felt I was in danger in Lima, and not here. He pointed to his head, as if to indicate he saw something, and then he said, “I now know what killed my Gloxinia!”
As we walked farther I noticed the Llamas in the field were restless, some by the mountainside, others lying about. Then I heard a cry of some kind, not sure if it was a child’s cry, a yelp or screech, or a cat’s, I couldn’t tell the difference.
I sat there by the creek, while Enrique went back to check on the car. I could hear him trying to start it, it was sputtering, the carburettor or something.
The screeching came louder, but I knew it was far away, I heard Enrique yell he was perhaps a few hundred feet from me now, a little distance for sure, “It sounds like a wild cat,” he yelled to me.
“No?” I said, questioning him; “I’ve never heard of a wild cat in these areas,” thinking going up to ‘White Mountain,’ perhaps, but not here in the valley, and so near the city of San Jeronimo, and Huancayo.
“Cat, Cat!” he yelled. I got thinking again, perhaps winter cats do come down near the city in winter. The animals were not quiet either, so something was in the makings, the sky was getting cloudy also, the sun had gone away, and I could now see my cold breath as the wind shifted it.

When I got back to the car, it was still not running, and Enrique said with shaking hands, “Tell me,” he asked, “about the animal called the Manticore, where did it come from…” he was looking up towards the hills. “It is unholy, is it not?”
“What is unholy, the animal, or the being it is under its shape?”
“The being?” he enquired. As I looked about the valley and up in the hills where there were a few old mines, where he had been looking. The mine no one had worked them anymore, but I got a sense something was up there.
“No, not sure if she was unholy or not, I tend to think she was, the Queen of Ur, that is who is in the shape of the Manticore, her second soul.
Whereupon he burst out into a long yell in Spanish, a little mixed with English, “I see you in the hills lady lion, show your teeth!” He quickly grabbed my gun as if it would help.
I rapidly put my hand over his mouth, “It’s vital you do not call her, lest we all end up dead like before. I died, or at least I felt somehow I died, but came back to life, or I should have died. Likewise, the lady lion had died, but somehow her soul did not. Most dead remain dead, but this one does not. Enrique was evidently afraid to speak–whited-faced, out of fear, perspiring, trembling, and looking all around ready to shoot wildly, shoot at anything.
“Maybe you should give me the gun back,” I asked.
The llamas were now excitedly running everywhichway; out of the vicinity of he creek area. In Enrique’s anxiety he had dropped the keys to the car in the dirt and couldn’t find them now. Jabbering away in his native Quechua.

I figured there was more to this phenomenon in this valley and as soon as I told Enrique to go home, I’d stay another week or two in Huancayo, but wanted to remain by the creek for the afternoon, he could come back and pick me up in the evening, the car started right up, after he had calmed down and found the keys; and then began his tedious ride back to Huancayo, as I went the other direction, I turned to go up the creek area that cross the valley to the hills beyond. (I reflected a bit on Enrique’s despairing gesture when he left, Enrique had waved bye as he turned beyond the entrance into this creek area. He didn’t want to leave me, but I knew I needed time alone, and so did the cat, the Manticore, so it could find its way to me, if indeed the cat was about.)



Chapter Eight
The Dead Attack Fast


The middle aged drunk asked calmly, “Give me some money,” I was a stranger, walking along the creek, the bum feeling he could persuade me of some loose change, trying to anyhow, he also wanted to talk, tell me what he had seen:
“Cat! That thing was a cat, in a cat’s body, red; wild eyed, a voice like pipes, swift”… (He was falling about, perhaps hit by the needle like tail of the Manticore, it had leaped on him I figured—like it had leaped on me and my friends in Lima, it had these long pine like needles on its tail—poisoned, and it shot out from its tail in all directions, paralysing anyone in its way, and here was this bum, now spitting out goo from his mouth, like a horse slobbering over some grass and substance dripping out along its sides—he looked like he was dying, I saw some of the Mantic ore’s needles in him.
“Where,” I asked, “where did you see him?” he was on the ground, exhibiting much fear, and still spitting up and out of his mouth that same slime, that fat and creamy like substance, perhaps his insides. He kept saying ‘…the cat,’ holding his head; he started laughing at the whole thing, pointed to the hills on the left side of the creek. I started to hum that magical chant for some odd reason, knowing the Manticore was about. I left him where he lay, and headed further up the creek.

The night came upon the valley fast, twilight seeped over the hills, an uncanny feeling come over me, as if the world of dead souls were upon me, the resurrected ones from the tombs where the second souls lived, and seemed to have a second life, or could have with the right enchantments. Thus, I felt the presence of the Manticore, why or how I don’t know. I have to admit I was enchanted with the idea of the magic that surround this phenomenon, possessive of it almost, and unconsciously had hoped to find its secrets, and consciously prayer to see the Manticore once more.
This shouldering tribulation put me in a vulnerable circumstance: if I did see her, it means my death, or could; if not, I’d wish I’d have tried harder to see her, somewhere along life’s line. For sure, the devil himself was on her shoulder, and would show no mercy; but she was only a part of a trinity of souls, one disconnected from the others. I knew she had heard Enrique’s summons; evil has wings, and can attack fast, so I’ve learned. She had two faces, one evil, one beautiful, I had noticed that in the mirror; in a dream, I could even feel that: what face would she put on this evening, if indeed she appeared: so I wondered.

Evil had revealed itself in this peaceful valley, the very place I called my second home. And like lighting striking a tree and it falling on top of you, I collapsed flat on my back, the ground shook around me, it sounded like an earthquake to my ears: like trumpets, I was entombed with a body over me blue eyes, a deep red body, she had changed, the ill omen had found her feast, me, as her three rows of teeth grinded in my face; the man-eater crouched over me to the point of almost sucking the life out of me: ugly as a dried up heart, her beauty had transferred to some kind of evil looking beast, with bat wings attached to her.


Chapter Nine
The Dark Has Voices


It all happened so fast my whole physical body was stunned paralysed. Yet I had a strange feeling about all of this, the monster cat breathing over me, a deadly blinding soul with iron looking teeth, glaring at me with flaming red eyes: why did it not eat me? Why did it hesitate, I was helpless. I would guess the dead, and wild part of her soul manifested itself this time, fully.
I tried to scream, but no words came out, her grip on my arms was painful with her claws ripping into my skin. I couldn’t move, she dragged me over to some bushes, as if to protect me from other animals, or to slaughter me later like a lion might. It was the last thing I remember: a massive dark shadow dragging me.

—I must have been asleep, or dead again, the world inside and outside of me was stone still it seemed for a very long time. A warm body was on top of me, which is all I know. The creature perhaps, thinking I was dead. Or making sure I wasn’t.
As I awoke and passed out, intermittently, I saw the gigantic cat pacing about, then again I passed out for a spell of time. When I awoke this time fully conscious now, I heard a “Hola! Hola!” It was Enrique and his wife, Mini calling me in unison.
Carefully I raised my head, felt my body, I was still whole it seemed, but the twilight had turned into deep night, and there was only the moon to give me light. I heard the cat nearby murmuring, in a strange way I could see her red eyes, in the foliage about twenty-feet from me, as the voices continued to call my name.
The voices came in faster and louder; they were coming to rescue me, yet I feared for them. Then nearby came flashes of lights, from flashlights, and several more and strange voices, folks from the nearby town-let, I expect; all were calling my name. By the looks of things, the local police were also involved, I heard someone say “Sergeant, over there!”
Someone would tell me later he saw a wild cat creep away as they neared me. Again I asked myself why I was still alive; perhaps the Manticore was using me for sport.




The Old Adobe 16th Century Church, San Sebastian



Chapter Ten
Wooing of the Beast of Ill


In the city of San Jeronimo de Tunan, the mayor, Jesus Vargas, had called off the search, the manhunt for me that is, and I was quite relieved, as he was, both of us being friends.
Here in this small town-let, village in the Mantaro Valley, were adobe houses and lovely cottages, some dating back to the mid 16th century, time of the conquistadors, as did the church called Saint Sebastian.
In the larger houses, mansions that is, there were chapels and narrow gardens, plants of all kinds, cactuses, and wildflowers: little pathways that led to and around the houses. Many of the window ledges were filled with pots of flowers and foliage plants: a peaceful climate for me undeniably. Here is where I’d stay I figured, it was what everyone wanted, and I got to liking the idea also. I bought the Mayer’s mother’s house and got it for a fair price, and moved in.

After dinner one evening, cigar in my mouth, a quick shot of light-dry red wine, I strolled over to the little adobe church, San Sebastian, I liked it so much, I once tried to buy it, and the Mayor thought I was kidding, if not crazy, and that was that. Anyhow, I walked over to this 16th century church, more of a ruins I should say, it looks like a small fortress, thick walled adobe place of worship, no roof over it, a hill behind it, there I stood in the middle of it. I liked the atmosphere, it filled my spirit, then I got thinking, whistling a tune, likened to the chant of the Sumerian tablet, then appeared those eyes, the Manticore on the hillside looking down into the unroofed church, not moving up to the church, just staying a good distance away from it on the prominence. The evening was enchanting, twilight came, and the moon glowed upon the hill: hence, she showed her full self—she looked like a queen this evening, she was gracefully beautiful; then her eyes disappeared within the hills beyond.
It was a lovely evening I told myself, as I thought: how quiet and still the atmosphere is, the dark has so many shadows: but the main disturbing element of these hours of darkness was: or so I felt were, or had to ask myself: was the cat, or in particular, the Manticore, wooing me?


6/19/2005












1.


Elephants in the Sky
[1980s, Lee Evens in Mali, Timbuktu/Africa]



Advance: Lee was discharged from the Army in 1980, whereupon, he traveled the world, one of those locations was in Mali, by the legendary city of Timbuktu; whereupon he found himself in the middle of a plague, a plague of locust.

[Diary-review]


There were swarms of locust over the top of my car, in front of me, in front of the car—swarms I say swarms: a dark shadow covering the sky, descending, descending onto the road—in front of me, behind me, it was locusts, locusts, locusts—locusts everywhere, everyplace: so thick, thick with layers that made my car slip, slipping and sliding as if on ice. They seemed like they walked, walked, walked among the sky, cluttered together like big oaks; akin to a druid dark sky, coeval with the leering sky. They looked like pools of ghouls embracing, embracing the hooded faded sky that looked like dusk, but weren’t. Good God, good God, good God, I cried!
My radiator was being blocked, plugged by these finger-sized carcasses. I had to pull over to the side of the road. It was but a moment thereafter when I saw some adolescents down the road a bit, not too far, just a little ways, three of them trying to beat them off, beat the locusts with their belts, pants belts. Then one resorted to a stick, a stick I say, would you use a stick? To be honest, I’d run I think, run like hell; anyhow, he took a stick to beating them off, while the other used their hats, hands; they were dropping down like hail onto them from all sides; ragged looking shadows of them, full-fledged shadows, throbbing against their bodies were these locusts: down and sideways: bombarding them like creatures from outer space, like in the bible, where it mentions such things happening back in those far off days, the days Moses: the plagues God bequeath upon the pharaoh.
I think these kids would have loved to have found a window anyplace to climb through, and nail shut about now, as I kept looking out of my car window, and these creatures stained my window dirty with their restless scribbled bodies.
This was bad, very bad; the large insects were in their hair, noses, ears, climbing up their pants legs, flying straight for their mouths. They tried to spit them out, but more would jump from ear to nose to mouth.
The whole area was becoming infested with them [them: being, those locust critters; huge grasshoppers]. They were becoming as thick as the walls of Troy—twenty feet thick. I turned the engine of my rented car off; it spit and sputtered a bit, then came to a dead stop, a burping stop. I could not see the boys anymore, only a cocoon of these creatures several inches thick around them—like mummies; they now rolled about on the ground like dying lions, screaming: it simply shivered me; it was as if hate and love coiled within my stomach.
For a hundred miles around I had heard they were eating up the crops before anyone had time to harvest them; catastrophic damage to all the crops, as the new generation of larvae appeared—thus, widening the dimensions of the one-hundred mile radius to possibly two-hundred miles (sooner than later). But now they were on top of my car: yes, yes, yes, on top of my car; under it, all over it, and in the fields beside me, on the road. I was but twenty-five miles outside of Timbuktu. Ah! What would you do?
As far as I knew, there was no means of spraying available to kill these creepy-crawlers, nor any other treatment, why that occurred to me, is beyond me, I mean who gives a shit, I’m in the middle of it; yes, yes, no equipment as supplies were of a minimum and vehicles were scarce—I was lucky to have secured a deal with this jeep. I was witnessing farmers beating the locust into trenches; what more could they do? Swatting them, whacking them, from all sides, and running: I mean running! Like the boys should have done, didn’t do, but should have done, could not do anymore.
(This was the moment I’d put forward to later, when I telling others they looked like elephants in the sky. But that was to be a little bit in the future yet; now they just kept coming and coming and coming, these locust-insects.)
Now I’m breathing in the hot air in the jeep, it seems to me I’m recycling my own air. In the five-mile area they covered most everything; there were at least, must have been at least, couldn’t be less than 250-million locust I figured (insects); hoppers, yellow winged hoppers—crazy and manic hoppers, as if they were on a sugar high. That would be a weight volume of 5000-elephents dropping from the sky. I had a lot of time to figure that out, for the most part, let’s say hours watching these hoppers fly and jump, and descend, trying to eat my tires—trying to get into the jeep and eat me.
‘Try, try, try,’ I said, ‘…fuck you all I said.’

[Entry] “I was in Timbuktu a few days ago, on my way back to Timbuktu now, I had been in the countryside—where theses critters were breeding, I am not sure where it was in particular, but it was in Mali where they had breed I do believe—first, someplace in Mali. I was doing what I love to do, checking out some old writings that were found in one of the old mud houses in Timbuktu; realizing at one time Timbuktu was a Mecca for learning for the Muslims, or better put, Islamic cultured; on the old Silk Road you could say. I was eager, the phenomenon would move east, away from me, to Sudan or Chad, or all the way to Egypt; move away to anyplace, but out of Mali and for sure, away from Timbuktu in particular. I was surprised there was not a humanitarian crisis alert, or if there was it didn’t look like it where I was; yes, were the United Nation’s vehicles? A good question I figured, and never to be answered.
The trick is to kill them before new generations developed, thus stopping them in their tracks from breaking into other places—countries, and a new cycle starting. The crops I knew would be gone soon in the south and now in this area as well, if they were not yet, and should they go east—well, let them worry about that.”

They leaped like little elephants on the hood now, hood of, of my car; they looked, looked into my windows, deep into my windows, nose against the glass (smutches all over the glass like a disease; voracious little dispositions all over their faces, like fairies stuck together) as if I was eatable, somehow I got the sense (they had the scent, my scent I expect) they knew I was trapped in the car, and I was for sure. But I remember what Solomon told me in Egypt, Cairo a few months back, should something like this occur—so it was somewhat forecasted almost—and it was now developing: anyhow he said,
“(‘…should this occur…’) Try to make it till morning, when everything cools down.”
I figured the wingless ‘hoppers’ the new breed, were developing now in the fields around me as the adult yellow ones could be seen flying about eating, and killed by whomever (the farmers and gosh, that was about it for now).

[The Big Hopper: diary entry] One big hopper gazed through my window, must be the size of a sparrow—(I’m writing this down as he’s looking at me). At its sight I saw its milky eyes, they followed me, then I realized it was somewhat blind, I mean, its eyes gave out a yellowness to it, as if it had cataracts, its lips trembled from old age, it mumbled something, as if talking to itself, then it stood aside to let the younger ones peer in on me.
“Come…súh!” (Note: the author translates for the bug) the big one said (smiling an amiable grin). Thus, with apprehensiveness my eyebrows were quivering with my nervous system was wacky. Panting like a dog, I was. I was so bewildered…! I ended up looking out the window for the longest time…blankly; then turning my head demurely to see if any of those hoppers where in back of me—sneaking up on me; were getting inside the jeep. My eyes could not relax from this insidious invading force, if anything was quite disarming…this was, but then what would you expect, harmony in the middle of an earthquake? What would you expect? I found myself drifting at times, but I knew I couldn’t go to sleep. I mean who could?
There I sat behind the wheel, crouched forward to peer through the blinding storm of locust; these hoppers were like rain sheets hitting the windshield quicker than the wipers could fan it clean. My palm and forehead had a glossy mist to it.


It was now mid-afternoon, and they were hot, it was hot, I was hot, everything, even the car was hot, and thus, morning would be my best time to make my move, when they’d be cooled down, down in the crops around me—quiet. Hence, I had turned my car off and I’d leave my car off, the suspense would come in the morning when I’d have to try and start it again.

—[2:00 AM] I must had fallen to sleep, and an automatic clock in my head woke me up, it was inky dark out there, outside my windows, hence, I started my car up, it choked a bit, but it started, and I noticed my water gage going up, as if a water hose was plugged or ripped. I turned the car off. I didn’t want to make too much noise, just get out of here and get back to Timbuktu: I figured they’d follow the crops, and bypass the city; oh possibly a few million might divert themselves to the city, but that is not bad; I mean, what is a million when you got 249-million more. I knew they were all on the cool ground and in a few hours they’d be in the air again—over me again; and should they decide to stick around I’d die of a heat stroke I figured, sooner than later that is, sooner than they’d get a chance to eat me. I opened my car door slowly, pacifying the moment; shinned a flashlight on the road beside me, there were many about—sleeping, quiet, almost stone-still—could I have hummed them to oblivion, I would have; but I could walk around them for the most part I figured, and I did, did just that, then I opened the hood of the car, slowly, quietly, with more gentleness then I ever knew I had, as if it was a woman, looked at the hose, and several hoppers flew in my face, I had glasses on, they poked at my eyes nonetheless, I said nothing, nothing at all, just swatted them away with the rag I had in my hand—and I didn’t use much force in doing that. One hose had a small crack in it. I knew I’d lose water, all the water I had in the car in about five miles should I not prepare it, with twenty miles left to go should I not fix it—I’d be worse off than now, I’d be stranded right in their pathway. The engine was covered with the winged hoppers, I wanted to say to these hoppers a few gruesome swear words, but I can’t, I’d wake them creatures up surely; I had waked them up—a few of them up already, and they started to fly out and about clearing a passage to my hose.
They were not jumping on me, just a few, trying to crawl up my pants legs—tickling me here and there: still attacking my glasses; I think they liked glass—but just a few attacked me half in a fog out of some instinct and automatic reflex: nothing to get alarmed about I told myself. I tried not to open my mouth, a few seemed to spot it when I took in a deep breathe of air—as if they had radar, consequently, they zoomed right at it, I had to spit them out as when they hit my face their legs seemed to have found their way into the crevice of my mouth. Then I got an idea, I opened my trunk up, took out a five gallon can of gasoline, in this country you always carry extra gas, water and food, always—lest you find yourself in some deserted location, as I have at this very moment; I poured it on the side of the road, up about two-hundred-feet leading into the fields, then on my way back I took my First Aid kit, put the white tape—normally used for bandaging wounds—put it around the hole in the hose (not making a sound), and started my car up, at the same time I lit the gasoline by throwing a match out of the window onto the road, and I hit the accelerator to fifty-miles an hour (it’s as fast as my jeep would go ((it was an old US Army jeep they must had purchased it from some Army surplus garage)) and I watched the road and fields explode with lightening-like fire behind me.
Yes, yes, yes, behind me was a windless fire breeding into the fields, eating hoppers while sleeping, roasted grasshoppers: yes, yes, yes they woke up, this horde of hoppers woke up in a French-fired position I’m sure; to them I expect it was their ‘Pompeii,’ and shall talk about it for a thousand years to come in this region of the world; to me it was salvation; oh yes, it is what legends are made out of in the hopper-world, I’m sure—I got a mouth full of toxic fumes which was the only curse of the predicament for me, and a bonfire galore as I raced to Timbuktu.

When I got to the city, it was locked up tight, everyone afraid to come out of their mud huts. I knew I couldn’t tell them I had lit the fire—for my sake; they’d make me pay for the corps I suppose (after the crisis was over I’m sure; for humanity has a short memory when it comes to thank-you’s and money). But I think they were happy to see it was all over, and a few heard my jeep motor, for slowly one by one, a few came out of their shops until the whole main street was out looking about with their doors open, ready to run back in a moments notice. I had expected them to invade the city somewhat—somewhat expected this to happen, as did the residents, but none did; and they did head east. Hence, had I told them about me lighting the fire, they’d have roasted me in it, so my silence, or intuition was right on.

Written 3/26/2005, while at the BN, Café in Roseville, Minnesota




2.

Project: Space Tomb
[a four part story]

Project: Space Tomb I
[Launch pad: Cibara-#17]





The Milky Way Galaxy



[2125 AD] It looked like a traveling prison, a space tomb to the observers; a heavy bulky projectile for the most part, as if it was shot out of a cannon, a hundred-thousand years ago; rustic and ancient with a technology unknown to scientists on earth. It was in the shape of a pellet, or bullet, a projectile, charcoal black, with a porthole on each side of it to look out. It was under observation for one-hundred years. The first year there were lights on, inside it, so the documents read on earth’s daily log. In the projectile were two bodies. Evidently, they had died in there and that was that; and thus, earth left it flow within its nestled orbit around earth’s moon, as it had fallen into it, one-hundred years until this time; this was kind of a gift to the ancient astronauts within the tomb one might say. As I mentioned before, it had been orbiting for one hundred-years, and the telescope that was tracking it was on top of a mountain in Peru, some 20,700 feet high. And after such a time, interest, of over a billion earthlings had considered this bullet shaped tomb, like their stray cat, now found and being taken care of.
This projectile was being watched from earth by a gigantic telescope; the project was called, “Project Space Tomb.” And there were three scientist involved. One from America, Tom Macare, one from Peru, Toño Guedes (head of the Observatory, although Tom, whom got the financing from American businessmen, thought he was the boss most of the time, and hence, fought with the Peruvian), and Milam Thomas, from England, whom was partly Welsh, so he claimed, was the person who seemed to be putting out the spats between the three, especially Tom and Toño. It was an ongoing research project, data collecting of its motions and chemical makeup, as well as metal contents. One of the goals was to try and figure out where it came from without disturbing the sanctity of the tomb itself—lest you get a uproar from interest groups on earth. Every group on earth, tried to claim the Tomb as belonging to their ancestors: from the Maya of Mexico and Central America, to the pre-Inca cultures of Peru, and all the way to the North American Indians; and from across the Atlantic Ocean all the way to Egypt, the Egyptians claimed it; and even the Jews claiming it might be part of the Lost Tribes of Israel—to mention a few.
The best scenario they could come up with was that the projectile ship was from, perchance, Mars; but then it would be older than dust. A hundred years now seemed little to no time at all; even 100,000-years did not seem long in such a development. It didn’t seem to fancy them to look beyond their solar system for some odd reason, perhaps they could have pinpointed it, for there was some markings on it that read, Launch Pad: Cibara #17; although it was only lightly visible through the rusty debris attached to the Tomb, and in some other kind of language other than English or even Spanish. A form of hieroglyphics [symbols of an unknown origin]. That is why the Maya archeologists and anthropologists of Egypt figured it could be of their ancestry. Yet, only half of it was visible, and it was more of a hoax, than reality for the people of earth.
In any case, it did fall perfectly into the Moon’s orbit, like a navigated asteroid, making its home for a hundred years thereof. It was now the year, 2125 AD, the Tomb as the scientist referred to it, was having its birthday today, July 1; it was now one-hundred years old according to earth’s paperwork. The American scientist, Tom, along with the Englishman, Milan, and Toño, the Peruvian, were spellbound to see the Tomb resurrect itself.
The Tomb’s windows in the projectile were no longer frozen, heat had returned to the projectile. It was 99-years since man had seen light within The Tomb. How could this be, Tom deliberated, looking heavily into the face of the telescope; perhaps an alien ship, or NASA had decided to invade it without notifying them—were his first thoughts.
For the most part, He was obsessed with the event taking place, and his mind shifted from one thought to the next like a child with a new toy. The next thing that took place was the bottom of the projectile had opened up. This was even more amazing for they saw no other space crafts about, so, what took place in the tomb? Or better yet, what was taking place. Evidently the beings within the container were obviously in some kind of hibernation state. But how did the two beings survive a hundred years or longer, was the next question that was going on in all three minds of the scientists; if indeed they did survive, and what they were seeing was not a group-illusion. For after years of looking at the Tomb, they all feared they could end up having some form of mass illusions.

—The first year of the 100-year span of them monitoring the Tomb, light was in the Tomb, and each of the two bodies inside the tomb were accounted for; each of the two bodies lay comfortable in two beds within the circumference of the projectile. For 99-years, it was dark inside the tomb, deadly dark, so the whole earth thought.
All said, the American scientist Tom Macare, of the observatory, seen that there now had returned light to the tomb:
“It has light,” he said in a calm and leveled voice—escalating, saying it several times, as the other two scientists looked strangely at him. Now each of the scientists took their turns watching the events unfold. Many thoughts filled their minds; all guesses of course, but that is when the imagination runs wild, when we don’t know, and no one tells us; as a result, they all stood thoughtless for a long while just staring into the telescope watching the turn of events, saying nothing to one another, as they took their five minute intervals.

Humanly speaking, the scientists were tongue-tied, watching these two begins coming out of the butt-end of the projectile. —There were many questions the three scientists had, plus, some kind of investigation surely had to be started, if not by NASA, by the world’s intelligence groups, perhaps the Pentagon, for surely they were awoken to the lights. There was a chance they did not see the two beings moving out of its escape hole underneath the projectile, with their low-grade telescope on earth, for the Observatory’s could amplify the item 60,000-times, and was the only one with that strength in use at the moment in the United States (yet Tom and Toño could not forget the Hubble Space Telescope III, was in place a distance away from the Moon, and it could take wonderful pictures, its intensity was extraordinary, and of course was much closer to the area than the 243,000-miles, as was earth’s telescope at the Observatory. Toño had known it was turned in the opposite direction last time he looked, which was yesterday, yet, no one check it in the past twenty-four hours. The second thought was, that they were the only ones on earth with direct responsibility of monitoring the Tomb so closely; in consequence, if the Military was, they were only in a smaller capacity; and whatever was on their minds, they were not telling anyone, especially the secret site of the Observatory, although everyone knew there was one someplace in the Andes. Again they were saying nothing publicly, perhaps because they felt, the world would wake up and panic if they disclosed the lights being on in the Tomb; if indeed they were aware of the two astronauts coming out of the projectile, would be another matter. It was without question, they saw the lights though, and were perplexed at best.

[Fifteen minutes later] In the mean time, earth scientists at NASA sent out a military space-probe (craft)for investigating the situation, which was normal, thought Tom, but why one with nuclear warheads on it? It was a Comet-probe; called that because of its speed. Approximately 900-miles per minute, thus it would reach its target in about 4.5 hours (or 270-minutes), the Moon and the Tomb; the speed of light being 186,300-miles a second; as one would measure distance in space. Earth’s Space Program at NASA had mastered the ‘State of Repose,’ meaning, to have the body rest during the duration of a voyage disregarding the harsh elements of its environment on the body; Tom had figured out the Tomb most likely had conquered the speed of light—in travel, while putting the beings in a state of hypertension ((or state of repose)), during its trillion-mile voyage was smart.
As I was about to say, broadly speaking, sending out the military-probe seemed somewhat ordinary to Tom, not being of military insight, he left the thought linger under defensive security risks. What was really on the three scientist minds, was: what was next with the two beings of the Tomb; and they put all other issues in the back of their minds; that being, notifying anyone, and only with quick jerks, shifted to monitor the probe as she burst through the stratosphere, into interstellar space.





Earth and Moon





During this time, the two beings from the Tomb incased now into ball like metal coffins, landed on the surface of the moon. The ball like cylinders opened up like a broken egg, yet they were not broken, rather almost like a fetus with a protective thin metal form around them—thus, they left them as one might leave his underwater gear on a beach to return to in a few hours. Then they walked throughout the airless planet as if it was an archeological site; mystified. They had landed on the North West side of the Moon, in an area between Mare Imbrium and Sirus Aestuum; the area to the east was where Apollo 15 had landed years ago, now in the history books. Nearby was the huge crater Copernicus, and Ghost Crater, Stadius. Beyond this was the huge Crater Plolemaeus. The two beings were astounded to see Stadius was completely over run by lava, and within its lower structure were huge crevices like tunnels or caves. They could see the orb of the earth from where they stood, it was a treasure to the two beings to see such color on a planet: a gift, or plus, one might say, especially in the gigantic galaxy called the Milky Way, with its horde of planets and stars, Earth being one of a kind, with its one and only sun, and huge moon to protect it. For they had seen many things, to include the center of the Milky Way, where there was a Black Hole; yet Earth was more a treasured sight to them.
—Tom noticed a strange happenings, both the individuals were picking up small rocks, holding them tight for a moment (as if squeezing them), then putting them back down on the surface, and repeating this experience over and over, about once every two or three minutes. As if they were sucking out some kind of life, or energy form from them; for their existence I would think. Puzzled as he was, he discounted the probe, for the moment, and watched the operation, still glancing back at the shells the two beings left on the moon, trying to put the puzzle together, or was it simple a riddle, not to be unwound?
After a while, this gave Doctor Tom Macare, an idea, and he mentioned it to his fellow scientists.
In the mean time, the probe was nearing its next phase within its flight, as it headed right for the Space Tomb.
—The two beings, now walked among the moons dust, by and by, they found rocks, sucking out life’s existence from them. Broadly speaking, like a bee sucking out the sweetness from a flower. The scientist never faltering in amazement, as they watched the two beings like adolescents watching girls at a dance.
Toño started to take some calculations, then shifted quickly to adjust them, and compared them with those for the past 100-years. Said he to the other two:
“Look here, the weight of the Tomb was at one time: 18,000-pounds; diameter 110-inches, and wall thickness, some 18-inches, the height about twelve feet. Now comparing that data with the first data we took in the year 2025, there is a big noticeable difference. The Tomb now weights 14,882-pounds, diameter 88-inches, and wall thickness, 15-inches; the height seems to have departed with three feet of its length, to nine feet now.”
The other two scientists twitched here and there, said the Englishman, “How can this be?”
All three looking at one another, “Ah, yes, yes, it must be,” said the Englishman, as the other two nodded their heads in agreement.
Now the three scientists saw the military-probe in a direct line going towards the Tomb, with almost frightful faces.
“Should we call NASA, or Military Intelligence, or perhaps, the White House, the FBI, or CIA, anyone?” asked Toño.
Said Tom, looking back into the telescope—with Milan next to him trying to get a glance, “Do whatever you must, we’ll keep you updated.”
But Toño could not bear to leave these comrades with all the new information being extracted minute by minute, and for them to get the glory of the new discovery when the science magazines come out was too much to bear, and to be quite frank, was out of the question. Therefore, he remained with the other two trying to get his 1/3 of the telescope’s time, watching the events unfold, moment by moment. Tom glanced at Toño, realizing he was not going to be the one losing the moment of excitement, and hence, handed the telescope over to him for his five minute interval, at which time the military-probe had reached its destination.
The lights of the Tomb went off again, as the bodies of the beings were on the moon, they had unplugged their bodies with a connecting devise—before they had left, which went into the main body structure of the Tomb; as if it was an incubator. The probe circled the Tomb several times, but the scientist, Toño had given the telescope back to Tom (saying nothing about its maneuvers), who gave it to Milan, who shifted immediately to the Moons surface and the two beings, Toño not saying anything about the probe, not thinking about it for the most part, for he had only seen it circle once, and that was only halfway around the Tomb, and times slips by quickly by when such things take place.
The military man in the probe now could be seen (by you and me, if this was a movie) talking on a handset-devise, for still the scientist was busy with the beings on the Moon.
“Hom…!” said Toño, “the two shells surely are life supporting items, like turtle shells you might say, how interesting; they must have to plug themselves into them as they do inside the Tomb.”
Tom now could see the life supporting energy the two beings were receiving from the items: rocks in particular, along with some strata formed substances, they were also picking up, “…hom…unbelievable,” was all he could say for the moment; then added: “…these beings could be eons old, whom is to say [?]” and he said no more.
“Calm everybody,” said the Englishman, trying to restore some equilibrium, as they now switched back to the Tomb, watching the military-probe, like a snake circle the obstacle for the eighth time.
“I think…” was all Milan, could say, when all of a sudden the probe disappeared, and a small nuclear blast followed thereafter; Milan’s mouth gaped, he then looked at Tom, as Tom looked at Toño, all stone-still, and silent.
Toño now took command of the telescope, the two small beings, one a little taller than the other, about four feet tall, held the hand of the other, as they walked into the darkness of the moon, seemingly, an endless shadow. Toño knew the smaller one of the two was hurt, hemorrhaging from the fall she took from the blast, she had hit her head on a surface rock. They could have gone to their shells, thought Toño, but they simply looked up and saw their home was gone—blasted into molecular space-dust. As Toño later would demise: ‘…what for [?], why would they even consider going to their shells…for what purpose?” The Moon was cold looking, dark and exhausted. The three scientists could no longer look into the telescope.

[Conclusion: Part One] When one action is put into place, it often times produces ripples; I am referring to the word given on earth to destroy the module, or Space Tomb, that was orbiting the Moon; thus, all forms of ripples, or even waves are ordained thereafter; yes, the Ministers of Doom are released and it is a free-for-all, one might say, and these currents could be many and various—for we deal perhaps with the ages, and beings from the furthermost ends of a galaxy—and know not their capabilities.




Los Andes Space Observatory
[Part II/Project: Space Tomb]



Los Andes Space Observatory





[July 16, 2126 AD] The engineering of the Space Tomb was simple, it was like a comet, it drew its energy from the sun, and the Tomb gave energy to its occupants. It had a cooling system, and when farthest away from a star or sun it—when it got coldest—as space can be 250 Fahrenheit, below zero—(and so their Thermometer read), there was always enough energy locked into its system to carry on until it needed to gather up more of a supply at its next destination; and hibernation for the crew members was always a way of conserving energy, thus the two astronauts would go into such a state. And unless disturbed by some kind of turbulence, the inertia, or state of the capsule, and the condition of the astronauts inside it, remained in a reposed arrangement, until woken up at its next destination; woken up only if disturbed because of a disturbance. But most often they never knew they where traveling in space, for there was no obstacles blocking their vessel’s path, it was just a dark, cold endless, tireless, ongoing ocean of nothing (space), until they looked out a window and saw they were getting closer to something, an object, a planet, light, a passing comet, or asteroid field.
The scientists from earth had deciphered the lettering on the space craft, they once called the Space Tomb, before they destroyed it; it was called Cibara—#7, they were not sure what that was, but their best guess was their right guess, it was another planet, in another solar system; or at least Tom Macare, came to that conclusion, and his boss Toño, who worked at the Los Andes Space Observatory [Peruvian]. A few months after the United States Military Comet-Probe, destroyed the Space Tomb with a small nuclear blast, this discover was brought out in the scientist journals by Tom and Toño (their assistant, Milan Thomas ((English)) had quite because of the destructive way the military had acted with the Space Tomb).



Northwest Side of the Moon


International-NASA (now owned by the United Nations), had allowed another space exhibition, journey that is, from the University of Minnesota, for the purpose of younger students to study the physical structure [geological studies] of the moon; wherein, they would provide all information to them upon their return, before releasing it to the University for others to study. It would be a four hour flight to the moon, and the astronauts would have to be put into a state of relaxation, called the ‘repose state’ where the body functions normally, according to the body needs and not according to the elements of the environment.
At present, the International Space Station was but 100,000-miles from the earth with scientists from Russia, England and France along with Americans; and the Hobble Space Telescope III, was 43,000-miles from that. The moon, being about 110,000-miles from the Telescope; all was in place when their space craft left the Florida coast, and the space telescope from the Los Andes Observatory along with the Hobble III, followed their movements. It was routine for the most part; yet it no expeditions were allowed for a year because of the nuclear blast being so close to the moon, they wanted to test the molecular debris around the Moon, and within a 2000-mile radius from the moon to space. Thus, the clear sign was given.
—At this time, Tom Macare and Toño positioned their telescope back onto the moon, knowing where they were going to land they scanned the area. They did not know the two surviving Cibaralites were alive and well on the opposite side of the moon, the northwest side. They had survived the blast, and the ongoing elements of the moon, with its freezing temperatures and so forth. They had journeyed to what was known as Mare Imbrium (a Mare being like a dried up sea for the most part), not far from them was where Apollo 15 had landed years prior to this, now ancient history of course. Consequently, they crossed over to Stadius, otherwise known as the Ghost Crater. Here, they found, in-between fissures towards the bottom of the crater, a home like cave, wherein they made their home for a year. They had plugged their bodies into their shell like apparatuses that they used to descend to the moon from their spacecraft; this cave allowed them to have these devises grounded into the walls of the crater, where the machine could extract the vital oils and resources their bodies needed to survive, and transform them into matter their body could use for nourishment. To the southwest of them was Mare Humorum, and to the north, Copernicus.
By some kind of second insight, they knew the spacecraft from earth, to the moon had taken off with Doctor Peter Leaky, and his two students, Hans Bosbash, from Frankfurt, Germany, and Luiz Colitt, from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. The doctor, fifty-seven years old, was married, with no children, and the two students, both 26-years old, were not married. By the time the expedition had landed with their space unit, and spacesuits on the moon, on the eastside of the moon, nearby where Apollo 11, historical landing, the two stranded astronauts from the Space Tomb, were watching the three earthlings gathering rocks and testing them, some three hundred-yards from their craft.
As the two closed in on the space unit, they were not noticed at all, therefore, they crept into the unit unseen. The two worked as a team, the female seemingly quicker with figuring out how the mechanics of the space unit worked, and how to operate it manually. The husband, or male astronaut, looked about, and then caught the eyes of Hans. Hans wiped his eyes quickly, to see if what he was seeing was really what he was seeing; and the two ducked down, but again, it seemed the two Cibaralites did not panic, as if they knew by instinct the three was not coming. Matter-of-fact, Hans mentioned it to the Doctor, in a passing sort of way, and all three looked at the unit gracefully, but came to the no conclusion, and accepted it as a mirage; for they all went back to working; which they would regret in a moments time, for no longer had they turned their heads back to the scientific investigations they were doing, when the space unit started ascending.

(Let me leap back to the Ghost Crater a moment, before all this too place.)—During this time period, Tom had seen the Cibaralites crossing over like deer, leaping from one spot to the next, in northwestern part of the Moon, by Stadius, to the eastern part, but he said nothing; not even to Toño who was sleeping. He had made a mistake a year ago, and he was not going to do another. It was—he felt—the fate of the earthlings, or astronauts, as it was the fate of the Cibaralites a year ago. Thus, where does one step into preserving the other? But the second thought on his mind was, ‘…where was their next destination?’ As the two leaped from spot to spot, they both carried their shell like devises with them, the ones that kept them alive for over a year on the Moon, and the ones that they had descended to the Moon in from their spacecraft, so dubbed the Tomb by earths scientists.

It is a sad tale, but I must finish it. Once they reached the International Space Vessel, again it was not long for the female to figure out the operational expertise of the space vessel, and relay it to her mate. And within minutes they were space bound. And the three astronauts were left on the moon with an hour’s air; and the two inside the space vessel, turned off all communications with Florida and Huston, within their craft automatically turned off all communications with the stranded astronauts.


Destination Sedna


Doctor Macare looked at his monitoring screen pertaining to the international vessel, and across its computer read: “Sedna, Sedna, Sedna…and then, Cibara, Cibara…” as if the Cibaralites new what he wanted to know, which was his pay for silence I suppose. Then the screen went blank. Tom and Toño, already knew where Sedna was, it ranged between 450 to 1000-million miles from earth during its orbit; it was a brown asteroid looking orb, two thirds the size of Planet Pluto, and that is was in the direction they were headed. He was then wondering: perhaps Pluto, Sedna and Cibara were all by one another, and Sedna crossed over into another solar system, where Cibara was.
Anything was possible at this point. Then as the computer had went black, at that moment Toño woke up looked towards Tom and the blank computer, asked, “Amigo, what has happened?”




Sedna to Cibara
[Part III to Project Space Tomb]



Sedna/by Pluto and Beyond



Sedna’s composition was ice and soil, mixed for the most part with (H20) water; (CH4) methane and frozen CO2 (carbon dioxide). The soil was carbon rich—brown from the components. Temperatures on Sedan got 300 below zero (at 450-plus, all heat nonexistent, it seldom got to that point). It is two thirds the size of the Planet Pluto, and travels a 1000-million mile orbit in one direction, and is ten times the distance from earth’s sun, to earth’s stable 93,000-million mile distance. This is what the Cibaralites astronauts were chasing as it was bound to cross over into Cibara’s orbit, in the outer limits of earth’s solar system, past Pluto and beyond. This large mass of frozen rock, would remain in Cibara’s orbit but a few days, only to have a window of a few hours, for opportunity to break loose with its orbit, to descend to the planet Cibara, or else be pulled along with Sedan’s magnetic hold, equal to that of the Earth’s vs. the Moon’s.





International Space Probe [Explorer]


The traveler’s body makeup was capable of withstanding extreme limits of cold, thus, the space-probe [explorer], was now chasing Sedna like a bee, and even if the heading system did not work well, just the motion of the probe at such a high velocity would keep the outer part of the craft hot, thus, they’d not freeze to death.
—At the Space Observatory, Los Andes, Space Center, Tom had explained all to Toño who was now monitoring the space vessel, chasing Sedna into an unfamiliar orbit, and beyond the Oort Cloud (or Kuiper Belt), where a trillion comets dwelled (balls of frozen gas, dust, and water). Here they whoosh, flew by like a bullet freely, and the two Cibaralites knew it was dangerous, and difficult to transcend, but if they could get into the gravity of Sedna, they’d be pulled along and perhaps protected if bombarded by an oncoming comet happened; and thus pulling themselves out of the gravity belt, in time to catch Cibara’s. For, inasmuch as they could tell, the space craft could pull its self out of the no atmosphere asteroid, and into that of Cibara’s with ease, for it had done so with earths a dozen times over; it was not like theirs a hundred years ago, which was quite primitive, but strong enough to what was needed at the time.
The two scientists knew Sedna would enter into the dusty and complicated comet scattered belt ahead—and soon, and into the outer realm of the solar system, but they could follow with the help of Hobble IV, a space telescope some thirty million miles past the moon, monitoring dead space, and galaxy’s for the International Community, and Military Scientist; yet at the moment, it was freed for their use, at Toño’s request, as he had said he needed to get some data on the comets in the Oort Cloud, knowing, had he said more on the two astronauts, they’d be hunted down by several military Comet-Space Probes, which acted like assassins.


Interlude

[Narrator] This is a good place to take a rest from the story and explain the following. Toño followed the explorer probe carefully with the two telescopes working together, to send back the reflections of the giant asteroid, called Sedna, and its warm space craft, which showed its heat level as all things in motion have, onto their sensory screen, thus catching a dotted glimpse of their whereabouts as they followed the asteroid, into the density of the Oort Cloud. Again both so self consumed with the moments happenings, they did not look at priorities, if they had them, or even consequences; thus not reporting nothing to the authorities. In the past 100-years or so, they had chartered, over 10,000-new planets in other galaxy’s, but not Cibara, or Moiromma, beyond the Oort Cloud, in another solar system—you might add. The reason being, planets unlike stars do not generate their own light, but reflect the planets star’s light. And Cibara and Moiromma, where too far between earths’s sun; and their own sun, which was 200-million miles beyond them, going in the opposite direction of Earth. Both Cibara and Moiromma had moons, thus, a protection at times from the elements coming in from space, likened to Earth’s Moon. But at best, only a small wobble in Cibara could be detected with a dim shadowy orb along with it, and that was very faint to the searchers, which Tom noticed searching beyond Sedna; but no sooner had Toño taken the telescope— he followed Sedna again—noticing beyond Sedna, there was something else, “But why would the two Cibaralites pinpoint their planet to us…?” Toño mumbled out loud? ‘…and only to us…?

[Sedna] The travelers had caught Sedna’s orbit just before they passed Pluto—now looking back at Neptune behind them, the space travelers smiled at one another, as did Toño to Tom, as they kept watch on the progress as they neared and entered the Kuiper Belt, bodies of comets and asteroids all about, here and there, objects everywhere. (Sedna having a 1000-plus mile diameter, the travelers hoped it would be a good shield for them until they reached their home planet; inasmuch as, Sedna looped around Cibara in its long and enduring orbit. They were like hitchhikers.)

—Toño looked about through the telescope, he could see a 900-mile diameter asteroid, called 2004-DW, kind of a giant for the Kuiper Belt objects one might say, reddish-brown, orbiting close to Pluto, and nearing Sedna, as it had passed, so close, the probe was almost sucked into its thrust; somehow, both huge bodies neutralizing one another, as the space craft wobbled about between them two great bodies for a short moment; thus, settling closer to Sedna.
The female Cibaralite looked at the chronometer, it was 4:00 PM, earth time, terrestrial time, who knows, it was morning on Sedna, for the reflection of the sun could be seen on its convexity (outer curve, which reflected the mountains, and a few craters, shadows mixed with light; an orange kind of light.) They could see the Northern hemisphere; it looked like the probe was capable of pulling away from Sedna’s gravity.
As the travelers neared Cibara they shifted into Cibara’s orbit quickly and whirled about, they fell fast and deep into its atmosphere, red hot speeding through it, burning up as if the brakes of a train were being pushed on too quickly, way too quickly. They needed to slow down, and should they crash, they’d be nothing but vapor. But they were on the Northern Hemisphere, and as the cold of the winter hit the body of the probe, it cooled, and the travelers went into a frozen crater lake, this also, sizzled the outer frame of the space craft, allowing it to cool instantly, and as it sank, warmed the waters and unthawed the frozen ice, some 18-inches thick; but safe they were.

They would remain on Cibara for a short while; but they had a job to do back on the Moon, which would affect the Earth, and both travelers, gave an oath, to do it or die trying. The Cibaralites were a revengeful type of people you might say.

[Part four, on a napkin yet.]




Ministers of Doom
[Part IV to “Project: Space Tomb]





The Planet Cibara, looking up at Moiromma

[2127 AD—Spring] Have you ever put your brakes on? Or if you’ve been on a train, have you ever noticed what happens to the steel wheels of a train when the brakes are put on? I have, as a boy watched this experiment many times. It is motion turned into heat, atoms busting wild into the environment. The earth rotates around the sun faster than we can count, the trip takes 356-days, the moons attraction to the earth saves us from being burnt up as does the atmosphere; should we lose that, we’d lose our oceans into space. The earth, if it suddenly stopped what would happen? Woops…! Red lights would go on long before that, I hope. But Doctor Milam Skares, and his wife Mrs. Anita Skares, were about to do just that. They created a devise that could stop the earth like a train, just for a moment in time. It is possible, so they told their Court of Request a group of several elites on Cibara; yes, they wanted revenge for the earthlings stranding them on the moon. They had claimed they created a devise that could stop the earth; faint smiles came on the several faces at the Court of Requests. Diabolical faces to say the least.
“This is how it would work,” said the two scientists. It had been a year since they had arrived back home from their voyage to Earth’s moon, and still quiet hot festering some sort of revenge, revenge due earth, and its inhabitants, it was festering in their veins; likened to the ‘Merchant of Venice’; but they wanted more than a pound of flesh, they wanted all of Earth’s flesh, roasted into vapor.

Written in July, 2005








3.

Veteran Mirage




“Now that he’s alone again—” said Muse Harding.
I stopped short of responding, I really didn’t want anything to do with old man Beck. My Uncle Jeffery told me that the old man was dangerous, that he may not look or act it, but he had kind of one of those—so he called, ‘evil eyes,’ so I figured my uncle knew something. Oddly I thought it was—for my uncle to regard someone in this fashion—but he knew Muse, and the gang I hung around with was troublesome, and they liked to bully folks around, and Old Man Beck was the new guy on the block, sort of speaking, so he got the treatment from the gang I suppose you could say; my uncle got along with him quite well for some peculiar reason though, it baffled me at first. He came from Chicago I’ve heard (and at one time worked in the Stockyards of South Saint Paul, some twenty years before he moved here), and bought the store down the block, a small store, grocery store. I guess his wife died—she was from Chicago too, and he had met her when he was in the Army, some time ago, and when he got out, moved there with her, in Chicago. My uncle saw a plaque on the wall someplace in the store, WWII, I guess, veteran, and told me to take heed of that. But that was a long time ago, it was 1965 now, I mean, that was twenty years ago when that picture was taken—someplace over in the jungles in Indonesia. I’ve heard he fought over in Europe someplace also. So my uncle says.

“Frankie, let’s go and hassle old man Beck?” I hesitated, but the other two, Sammy and Amble, Muse’s girlfriend, all insisted. I liked Amble, she was genuine romance from the word go. When Muse (who was always thinking, or looked like he was thinking) was out of town with his dad fishing, she’d put out for both me and Sammy. She liked sex more than drinking or food, or so it seemed.
I started to walk towards the store, and all three started to applause me, as if it was a bribe they had to give to enhance my loyalty.
Once in the store Muse looked about, took some potato chips and started to eat them without paying; the old man looked a Muse about ready to say how much he owed, I think, and Muse kicked the potato chip stand so hard they all fell onto the floor. Muse was two hundred and eighty pounds, perhaps six-foot seven inches tall; the old man, five foot eight, probably 175 pounds; then Muse opened up a bottle of Coke and started drinking it. Again the old man was about to say something, but Muse yelled,
“Don’t open your mouth old man, or I’ll shut it for you.”
And the old man looked, stared at Muse as if he was a religious man of some kind, you know a convinced assurance this was not the end of this tribulation, almost a remorseless gleam in his eyes. Then I knew what my uncle was trying to tell me. Threats of hellfire came from his eyes, but Muse and Amble and Sammy didn’t’ see it that way.
With their knees and hands they tore the place apart, everything was on the floor: bread, tin goods, everything all over the place, short of actually taking money out of the register, the place was robbed of its potential to make a source of revenue for the old man, it was a disaster. I stood aghast. The old man looked at me, a smirk came to his face, and again I was the only one that saw it. His voice alternately hummed in a groan like fashion, utterances more than words. Yet in spite of this, he was calm, too calm for my liking; I looked at that picture my uncle told me about, it seemed to flash at me, like his clam eyes, he was calm in the picture also, with a damn rifle in his hands, and a closed mouth, hard looking face, piercing eyes, eyes like at this very moment.
“Mr. Beck, I’m sorry,” I said quickly, remembering what my uncle said, looking at his war picture he had on the wall, he had some colorful medals by them, not sure what they meant; a star and a heart shaped medal.
Said Muse without ceasing,
“Fuck the old man Frankie, I’m going to pound the shit out of him, get out of my way…!” and he grabbed the old man and slapped him several times across the face, but he’d not fight back, nor did he blink an eye, or shed a tear, it was like he needed to get mad before he could do anything, and I waited to see the old man do something but he did nothing, but perhaps taking the pain was something, it was surely more pain than I could take, and pain is not a lightly thing to overlook, I bet. It kind of struck Muse a bit, as if he was inquisitive why he was so tolerant, but he didn’t put two and two together—not yet anyhow. Like my uncle warned me, the evil eye picks its time and place, it has patience, tolerance, temperaments—, all viewed as distrustful in battle; you got to keep an open clear candle in your mind, and that is what old man Beck was doing.
—The physical and alive portrait of the old man—the way he looked now, this very moment, old man Beck, who owned this store was not good, and wh3n we left I expected to hear from the police, we all did, and Muse had a story for us, that we’d tell them if they questioned us.
We all were together playing cards at his house: simple as that. But somehow I had a chilly or overheated heart it wouldn’t end up being that way or so simply in the long run.
For two weeks I walked past the store, you could see through the windows, the old man just sat in the store looking at the destruction, not fixing this and that, anything a little bit of everything, or so it seemed, a lot of [or mostly] staring, and musing. He kept the door locked so no business could come in. Then a few more weeks went by, it was over a month now since the vicious attack on him and his store occurred, and the old man took no pains in fixing anything he just seemingly toyed with this and that in the store—tinkering around fixing whatever, but it was on a Monday morning we all saw him come out of his store and put up a ‘For Sale’, sign; funny how you can’t miss something like that; I mean you got all these things in the world to do, and you spot this immediately. It could have been anyway at any time, but it was just then, at that moment. Why not when I’m sleeping put up the sign. Anyhow, Muse, unimaginative, started to walk over to the old man, across the street, but the old man just kept to himself, nailed the sign up on the store door.
Various moments in my life I remember, and I do remember this one quite clear: nowadays (now that this is in the past) it is like a bell that rings, when triggered by some undisputed moment, happening in my life by someone else, this old moment comes up, up with a few others life cracking through thin ice, and all of a sudden sinking into cold icy water: Muse went to hit the old man, and the police were across the street, Muse had not seen them, and therefore, threw a direct heavy punch at the old man’s face, and the old man didn’t move. He took the punch, his face now bleeding; he wiped his lips, with the side of his hand, looked at the blood, and tasted it: yes, yes, yes, I didn’t stutter, he tastes it and smiles, I’ll be hogtied, he liked seeing the blood. I knew a man once, a fighter, my uncle really knew him, I just saw him fight, my uncle took me to the fights, and he let the other man hit him until he bleed, and then fought the man like crazy. I do believe that man after he looked at his blood, felt the pain, could not be beat with a bullet in his head; and he did win the fight, hands down, I mean he beat the man forkful, no mercy, no pity. This was one of those moments. Harmless you might think, but it shook up Muse. He went to hit him again, and the police came running over, and the potential attack was over.
The old man nodded to the police, as if all was ok, the policeman grabbing big Muse, his club in his hand ready for resistance, so says Beck:
“I thank you but no need for your assistance, we can settle this quietly.”
The police (there were two, one standing back a foot or two, hands on his holster, where his pistol was) were dumbfounded, and thought the old man a bit wacky, but walked away nonetheless, shaking their heads as if they wanted to mangle Muse for supper. Muse thought for a moment he scared the old man, scared him into a fear that should he not get Muse out of this situation, he’d come back later and finish the job; until the old man’s explanation came forth:
“Write and let me know how you’re doing,” the old man said.
Muse confused said, “Let you know what, write what?”
The man just walked away, waving his hand, nodded his head, brushed against the door as he walked inside his store.

The old man had moved out, and everything was quiet for a long time, perhaps three months. Then various things took place. In the bedrooms of Muse, Sammy and Amble, there were hand writings on their bedroom walls. Rambling descriptions of torments to be, pictures of decapitations; Muse tried to pretend he was not scared, but he was, we all were. He knew it was that old man, but didn’t know how he had gotten into his house, and then his bedroom. Amble was scared to death and called the police, but the old man was far away, in another state, and the police could do nothing to lower her fear; and Sammy, who never said much about these mysterious happenings, quivered all the time now.
This one day, I just kind of strolled by the old man’s store, now vacant, peeked through the window to see if he was there, knowing he wasn’t really, and took a quick look at that old picture on the wall, looked at that hard face, his eyes, that rifle, his solid stance, with the other soldiers. Then I noticed something I had never noticed before, but couldn’t see it clear, the faces on the men by him were strange, but I couldn’t pin point it, the strangeness to them. What was it, I mean, nothing alarming, just different, and something that didn’t belong. You ever get those feelings, something is wrong, but just what is not clear, I was getting on of those feelings. So I opened the window, it wasn’t hard, it was just old paint holding it tightly into its place, and once in I examined the picture closer.
The soldiers behind him were Japanese; enemy soldiers, with American Uniforms on. Funny I thought, then I looked closer, and there were soldiers behind them, holding the others up, the Japanese soldiers up, they were dead, all dead. Then I looked by their helmets, you could see round holes in their heads, all three of them. Funny I never saw that before, so I told myself, but then I only glanced at the picture, and it was behind the counter up a ways, blocked a bit by other items or merchandise. I had to take a second look, yes, yes, holes in the head, and not a bit of remorse from his face, from the old man’s face—cool as a cucumber. But why was he not holding them, why the other guys? So I asked myself. I looked closer at his rank: hay— I said, yes, he was the commanding officer, that’s got to be it, he was a captain, two bars, that’s captain rank all right. Then I noticed along side his belt, attached to his belt, on a chain hooked onto his belt, he had ears hanging. I quickly looked at the soldiers: my gosh, my gosh…I must have said it one –hundred times, “…my gosh…they have no ears!!”
—The old man then sent Muse a letter asking him how he was, how the gang was doing, hoping all was well with them. He even gave his new address so Muse, the big ox, so he could write back if he wished, and now Muse handed it over to the police, but the old man was back in Chicago, and Muse, well he and us in Minnesota, what could anyone do?
Sammy asked Muse, or better put, made a suggestion we all go to Chicago and do the old man in. But Muse was too scared, and I was not being tormented by him, it was they, so I refused (I figured better left alone, they did the dirty deeds they can pay the price, plus it was only a little scare tactic by the old man, for the moment).
Sammy did go on his own looking for the old man, bought a gun also, and never returned back to Minnesota. No one ever found a trace of him. The police questioned the old man, but all he said was: they had destroyed his property, and yes, Sammy came around, but he kept his doors locked, and would not allow him in, in fear of what might happen, and that was the last he knew of him. And once his story was checked out—for all knew the story back in Minnesota—the police left well enough alone, I mean, beyond that, what more checking could they do. But what bothered Muse was, the old man’s letters kept coming, and were cheerful. No revenge talk, no alarming words; nothing at all to indicate uneasiness, agitation, or apprehension. The disappearance of Sammy did not set well with his parents, but again, what could be done about it? Not a thing.

It was in July of 1966 when it happened, when it all took place. And it happened so quickly, so abruptly, it took a while to put it together. Mr. Beck had climbed up Muse’s tree somehow, someway, along side of his house, and opened his second story window, which led into his bedroom, he had cut the whole glass window right out of its frame. He was not a big man Mr. Beck, so he went through it easily. He injected something into Muse’s arm and stepped back as Muse jumped out of bed, and fell right back onto it paralyzed, like a big sequoia tree falling I picture it. Then the two-toned colored (green and black) charcoal face man—which looked similar to a leather mask tightly absorbed into his fleshy skin, his face, and neck, who we assumed at the time, to be Mr. Beck, had also a black bandana covering his forehead, silently paced the room, paced it calmly, and then abruptly, climbed upon the bed, like a scorpion, next to the huge Muse he bend his body to face him: head to head, the downed sequoia now had tears, moans coming out of Muse’s eye lids and mouth. Tangled, entwined, unable to move inside his own body and not able to unfasten his muscles to save himself, he looked into those eyes of Mr. Beck, he must have, the very ones in the picture; but the old man had no intentions of killing him, yet that would be the only mercy he was granted, if that indeed can be called mercy: for the ugly part had not yet taken place.
The old man pulled out a butcher’s knife, one for slicing bacon backs, and cutting the tendons in the back of a pigs foot, hanging from—and coming down from, the conveyer belt at a slaughterhouse, he had worked there once; in addition, he had used it to cut out the infected parts deep imbedded inside the ham pieces of the fleshly pigs, used at the stockyards in South Saint Paul (sometimes he was even told to leave the infectious part in, if they noticed him cutting too much out; and he’d laugh, not at what they said, but at what might happen to the person eating that old boil left inside the ham).
Now the old man grabbed the youth’s hand, the one he had been hit with, slapped with, his right wrist was now being severed, and in the clap of an eye, he had cut it completely off with a sweep. Muse’s eyes almost popped out of his sockets. Then he cut out his tongue out, and when he left as quickly as he had come in, he had two ears dangling from his belt, along side of his belt, on an old chain.
—That very same night, the night he left Muse’s house, he snuck over to Amble’s house, into her bedroom akin to the way he got into Muse’s house, he knew he’d have to complete his mission all at once: this very evening to be exact, lest the cops catch him, and perchance the mission would have to be aborted because of other extenuating circumstances, thus, it was this evening it had to be done, if done at all; thus, there he stood, there in the melting dark room, looking at her, peering down upon her, like a devil with a long tail, wondering what she was dreaming of, and when she wakes up what her response would be: would she think she woke up in hell? Or perhaps this was a bad dream. He looked at her ears, her nose, her everything; he told himself this had to be done quickly, no time for waiting, he took out a drawer from her dresser, and threw the cloths on the floor, now he had it in the air, when she opened her eyes, he hit her, smashed her in the head with it, clubbed her over the head with it like the butt of a riffle, then cut her foot off as if she might try to chase him, then he kicked her cloths around like she had kicked his food around, the very one that kicked all the food onto the floor: was thumping inside his head. She was out like a light, and off came her ears, and out the window he was, four ears flopping against his thigh.

Everyone seemed to know who done it, especially the victims and their parents, but the old man simply said it was a mirage on their behalf, he had left well enough alone, plus, there was no proof to that anyhow, only cleaver guesses, although guesses that were pretty right on, you could not win in court, so the county attorney said. This is not the end of the story, no, the old man sent flowers to the hospitals they were both at, Muse and his girlfriend, like throwing salt on a wound. The parents of the kids even hired guards to sit outside the hospitals rooms.
One might be saying, this was overkill for a nasty deed done to an old man, and I’d agree with it, except, it might get back to the old man, and he’d come after me, so I’m just saying: justice was done, and my uncle was right.

[4/2005] You may be asking, how do I know this to be true, and to be telling the story to you; well, my Uncle told me the parts I didn’t already know, and old man Beck was my uncle’s commanding officer in the war…something he forgot to let me know until after the incident; my sense of duty to my uncle was to say nothing to anyone and so I didn’t, I mean, I didn’t until now—some forty years after the fact. My uncle and old man Beck are dead now—the old man died in 1974 and my uncle in 2003; so I can now let the world know. Muse is still alive so if he reads this, he will know, and so is the once lovely Amble (her nickname we made up for her of course), whose real name is Marybell; sorry I couldn’t have told you sooner.


[Note: Took a shower, and this story just popped into my mind somehow; Written: 4/2/2005] Revised and reedited 1/8/2006



€

Moon-Paths

As the fire simmers out
Darkness shades the moon
The flickering skies shouts
Making moon-paths!…

Now the fire’s on my face
I choke the roaring gloom
A skull-like grin takes place
With flickering moon-paths!...


#580 [3/23/05]; published on the Eldritch Dark, Clark A. Smith, Internet site





Life on a Finger


If this is life on a finger
Why do I feel so dead?
Why does my soul whisper?
Life is more than this.

What has my life been plotting?
While the world cringes and reeks
Humanity clinging so tightly—
As it hides and silently weeps.

#580 [3/23/05]



4.



The Portrait of:
Mr. Augusto S. Moaio






The Mu-man



“The Mu-men, how did they get here?” asked Professor Eceptico-Espirtu, of the University of Lima (in Peru).
“How do you think,” said a youthful student named: Augusto S. Moaio, a wild looking flat faced undergraduate from one of the South Pacific Islands: adding, “they came on a damn ship from Saturn and some from Mercury, from its gigantic volcano area.”
It was the first day of classes for the students and so the Professor hesitated in correcting the young lad, and simply smiled reluctantly at him. Then after a—something shorter than a pause—he remarked, “That all seems a bit far fetched, like one of those Edgar Rice Burroughs novels, or Mr. Doyle’s “Lost World,” crap”; the class laughed and so the professor figured he’d string the new student along and listen like a good father would to a spoiled son, and then make a lesson out of him in front of the class.
“So it does,” responded the mad and impatient young man, with a receding hairline, and long ears; not long-long ears, but not normal size either. Matter of fact, the professor took a second look for he had not noticed them a moment ago being long at all.
Said the Professor [cynically] “Tell me Mr. Moaio just where these Mu-men came from in a more specific and detailed manner: and if possible, in chronological order, for we all seem so uninformed according to you; henceforward son, move on, give us a better grasp on this!” This was the normally way for the professor to scare off his challengers [or challenges] in class; that is, toss a little fun their way [belittle them if need be] make them sweat; thus, shutting down their stupid questions, or remarks, as he felt they were just annoyances, but he had to allow some inquiry.
Said Mr. Moaio with a smile [after a short consideration], or was it a sneer, it’s hard to determine, “They were already here long before the aliens arrived: the Mu-men that is.”
“You don’t need to clarify who we are discussing; you are all alive and I dare say, some undergraduates, and some graduate students, are you not; you all got cultured brains I hope, especially being in my class you better have.” The ‘not’ and ‘you’ had an inflection to it. “Carry on Augusto,” bellowed the professor.
[A little stiffly—he’s mad.] “As I was about to say,” the class all looking at the young tall man standing by his desk now, all twenty students with inquisitive eyes and wondering if this was a stage play or what. “…the primitive Mu-men were injected with a chromosome buster, they were evidently breaking and life expectancy was less than twenty-five years for them, and the aliens helped in this area, in particular, the Saturnites. This of course was the beginnings of the highbred Mu-men, whom were similar to our great apes or primates if you will, prior to their helpful technology.”
The professor now said [laconically]. “So are we getting a lesson on Evolution, Mr. Moaio?”
“Oh no just a chronological order of how they came to be and whom they were as you wanted Sir.”
“Carry on, carry on, young lad…” said the professor—wild-eyed—with distain in his countenance, adding: “and when did all this take place, since you seem to have hidden knowledge none of us have; dates give me dates, they got to someplace in that big head of yours.” Now the professor got another laugh from his students, as he predicted. But it didn’t seem to faze the new student.
“Well,” he said with thought through breathe, ‘it’s not all that simple, it really was a long trip, I mean it happened in stages….”

[A pause, as Augusto took a swallow.]

(The professor now leaned against his podium, putting his forearms down on its wooden side frame; his lecture was stopped for the most part and he knew it, which was originally on the 8th continent [Lemuria: which was to have stretched from Easter Island to Tahiti, to Fiji and onto Guam and beyond, and over to Hawaii]. He was going to explore the Maya culture and the Egyptian and try to mix it in with Lemuria. It was all lost now, the South Pacific per se was his domain to talk about, he had spent 26-years on Easter Island, during his summer breaks, and was always delighted to start his program out on the history of this area adding his exploits to the learning process, and this Augusto had just taken it away.)



Said the professor [emphatically], “Were you were about to say something Mr. Moaio?”
[Blinking.] “The Mu-men were once a great ape society, giants if you will (the professor quickly added, ‘Like King Kong I suppose?’ but Augusto just continued to talk without stopping). In consequence, they were given a Gravity-reinforcer, what you might call a membrane around a cell, but it was put around the chromosomes of the Mu-men, allowing their chromosomes to withstand their breakage so easily. And in time they were even given an additional chromosome. Again I repeat myself, allowing longer life for the Mu-men.
The collapsing of the chromosomes was the big fault the aliens from Mercury had concluded. Thereafter, their life span jumped up fifteen if not twenty-five years, and as time proceeded they would gain even a longer life span, once acquiring better eating habits, disease control, along with better hygiene. I do agree with you professor with the size of the continent, although it was a bit larger (the professor gave a limped smile).
The Mu-men were self producing, in essence, they kind of laid eggs in reproducing themselves. And by the continued aid from the two alien races, they acquired both sex organs, and started to cohabitate with humans. Actually capturing them and bringing them to their abodes as they felt a need to, or out of necessity for offspring that might be more humanoid like. As a result, the alien races decided to stop the so called experiment; of course to the disappointment of the Mu-men. Let me add, the Mu-men were now a distorted bunch of creatures: some with three eyes, and feet that looked like ducks so they could walk backwards or forwards, some even sideways. In addition, they had a small cranial, possible that of the Neanderthal, or even Homo erectus. But he or they did become a new species, and that was what they wanted.”
As Augusto stopped to catch his breathe, the professor noticed his brow ridges were pronounced over his eyes (he hadn’t noticed them before being so), it was as if he was of an old age; for he concluded, age, thickens the brows, and drops the jaw bone, thus he must be very old, but he was young looking in all fairness.
The Professor [losing confidence under Augusto’s stare] said, “Continue please,” digging his fingers into the wood of the podium stand.
[Cooley.] “Well,” he continued with a dry mouth, but steady voice, “they had little brains compared to us, one could say. But great was their supernatural willpower; that is to say, they could move objects unbelievable heavy. Things large cranes today could not move.”
[Suspiciously.] The professor looked up to the ceiling as if to stop Augusto from talking for a moment—showing a bit of world-weariness, and want to insert his two-cents worth, thus, saying as he lowered his head, “No, no, now do you really think we are to believe this, I mean, move what, show us, I mean point to an example so we can scientifically …”
[Augusto now interrupts. He rings off despondently.] “I was about to explain, if you will let me Professor [a pause, limited to a moment] the Mu-men moved great stones with the clap of an eye, how they acquired this ability was a mixture of their hybrid genetic breeding I would imagine. They were quite primitive you know, and had four arms at one time. And for your dates, I’d say it was 17,694 BC when they became completely a jawboned bipedal human, yet let me not forget to include for your information, they remained still linked to the ancestry of the two limbed Lotus Demon [of Mercury] now, they carried their blood through these developing stages of trying to become closer to the humanoid species. And then around 13,500 BC, the war started with Atlantis.”
“Honesty,” said the professor, “…my gosh, now we got Atlantis in this so called thesis, and a two limbed demon, what next?”



Two limbed Lotus Demon


Said the professor with a speculative eye, “It seems to me you are grabbing at fragments of unwritten, mythological history, legends if you will, adding them to your recipe of anthropological gobbledygook, and with a slice of interplanetary jargon; and thinking we are to swallow it whole?”
Augusto (with a tortured mind trying to convince the professor ((magnanimously))—assured himself he’d give it one more try), “Professor [he said], a large object, possible several miles across struck the planet Mercury, this smashing into the planet caused immense waves of superheated vapor that rolled for hundreds of miles, killing everything in its path, thus the Mercurynites sought out another haven, earth. The impact was so devastating it caused a tidal wave sending millions of tons of dust and vapor into its atmosphere, which darkened a side of the planet; in a similar manner the very thing that took place on earth. The creatures of Mercury are in our blood.” Augusto had to imply the word ‘us,’ instead of ‘him,’ so as to not cause alarm.



Mercury’s Demise



At that very moment Augusto sat down in his chair, closed his eyes, and folded his hands [somewhat despairingly]. The Professor noticed now he had long finger nails—so the professor had just noticed—with a lofty high head of red hair, again something that just occurred to him, and his groin area bulged out as if he had an overgrown penis. All concerned, he was looking [He being: the Professor] at the rest of the class to see if they had noticed the transformation of this young student’s bodily configuration—and to no avail, they all seemed quite content to carry on with listening to the dialogue between the two, without an iota of any x-ray appearances taking place. Thus, he rubbed his eyes and wiped his glasses, but it was more than that. He tried to place this person into a gap of time, pre-historic epoch, relating him to mankind’s ancestors, like: Australopithecus, Homo Habilis or Home erectus, for he was shape changing in x-ray vision in front of him with such features, yet his height remained the same. Possibly he was seeing layers of this person, his ancestry layers, along with bazaar alien layers also, such as: skull, lower jaw, ribs, and vertebrae and limb fragments, ex-ray configurations. He was no paleontologist, but he knew what he saw in the fossil findings of early man, and he knew anatomy quite well. And he concluded he was witnessing 40,000-years in a moment’s time.
As Augusto closed his eyes, he held his hands against his frontal lobe, he chanted something beyond recognition, the professor could hear his heart beat, it was like the thumping of hoof beats—hoof beats coming louder and louder; the professor became speechless, almost as if in a trance. To break the silence the professor said, “It is all still a mystery; just, just a damn mystery…” but at the end of the last word the five story building started to shift off its concrete foundation, brick by brick it loosened and lift its home base—lifted up several inches from its groundwork. Then the young man opened his eyes, a flat look on his face, his teeth grinding, eyes bloodshot like a gorilla’s, a Great Ape’s.
Said the young man with a tarnished and rustic voice, one not quite like the Professor had heard a few minutes ago: “Mysteries are not meant to be completely sold for the price of curiosity, they all have a heavier price than one normally wants to pay, and should you wish to seek out all it has to offer, you will have to pay the price.” It was a statement not a question. It was as if the lad was giving the professor a choice of some kind (we also must remember the building is still standing several inches in the air and throughout the hallways and classrooms people are thinking an earthquake just took place and are running wildly about.) But let me continue with the shrewd professor—so he thinks he is.


“Mysteries, the mind, the why’s, they belong to people like me, who have studied all their life to seek them out; the layman knows not how to handle such things, it is the scientist who deserves the discovery.” The young man just looked [eagerly] at the professor as if he may get his wish. Then [breathlessly] crashing through the door was the Dean, he had ran from classroom to classroom, but when he came upon Professor EE’s room [as he was often called] he was stunned to see everyone still sitting calmly, and the professor at the podium still having a discussion, or so it looked like it to him.
“Are you mad Professor EE, get this classroom out of harms way, get them outside…we’re in the middle of an earthquake!” Then he ran uncontrollably out of the room to warn the adjacent class. At that moment, that very moment, the class seemed to have gotten out of its fog and stumbled to the door, all left, but the professor and the young man, whom remained stationary in the same positions they had been for the past hour, with their ongoing dialogue.

“Ah!” said Augusto [fiercely], “there is a Mecca of possibilities Professor!” The professor knew beyond a doubt he was with some kind of ancient being; possible a shape-changer, things were too weird, the whole day was too eerie. The building now fell back roughly onto its foundation, but was still not stable, it was leaning, and some of floors and stairways had broken and sunk onto the lower floor; it would take a miracle to put it back into place; it would have to be rebuilt.
The Professor [astounded] asked, “Where are you from?” now having changed his style and tone of voice.
“From the third cataclysm of Atlantis and the one wherein Mu sank, and Atlantis survived; as it had twice before tasted near-extinction, calamities as you would have it. The forth cataclysm it sank completely, those who survived, were scattered around the world. The residue of Mu was scattered around the world likewise, I helped build the Gran Saposoa in the Amazon jungle, lost to humanity for 2000-years. I seen two Ice Ages come and go; I witnessed the warm airs of Europe pass over to North America when there was no Greenland to subdue it. I witnessed the Geological North Pole move from the Northwest Passage to where it is today. I was one of the first Chahopoyas natives. It’s been an interesting life to say the least.” A sneer again appeared on the professor’s face, Augusto knew he’d have to prove it, but should he it would have to be—aggravatingly. It was one thing to show his powers in levitation, another to say you were over 13,000-years old.
“Excuse me Professor,” said Augusto, “just how much proof do you want of me, to scornfully prove, the Mu-man lives on in me?” Now Augusto’s body became like an x-ray again, but with beams radiating from it. But the professor, arrogantly would not except this manifestation as proof he was as old as he claimed or personified in [with] his materializations; and Augusto could not go beyond this without harming himself, or for that matter, without returning to his old genetic half-human like species, the one he left behind so long ago; changeability was not on his menu like his grandfather’s before him: it would be his obliteration, he had chromosomes now that would never break, he could live possibly 20,000-years should he care for himself properly. (You could hear the fire engines, and the police cars now outside ((below)); the authorities wondering what had, and was taking place, while these two men remained standing in the same place, same position they had now for, let’s say an hour and a half. Then just as the professor began to laugh, a little stiffly he became, his bones were receptive to the new developments inside his skin; his chromosomes: his twenty-third lost its vitality—his face looked as it had gone mad, his chin drooping with old age, distorted; he was developing long lived hormones, he was separating from the Homo sapiens, more within the genera of Australopithecus, with features closer to the Neanderthal, thus he was becoming a living fossil, if you will: close to the looks of Homo erectus. His large brow ridges now rested over his eyes, made him look a thousand years old, a build-up of bone over the eye socks that were so pronounced he could not look straight up at the ceiling as he did before; his feet were like a ducks, he must had been nine feet tall now, with a three eyes, two new arms growing, facial distortions, worse than homo erectus; a primitive human species beyond his imagination, more like the Murcerynites. His brain capacity was lowered, he couldn’t think quickly, and when he did think and try to hold the thought, he forgot it even quicker, but he had a stronger will now, but didn’t know how to use it. He would soon find out, he couldn’t change his body back to how it was. Augusto had learned how to transform into another comatose body, and when that person died of old age, he’d shift into another. But this freak of nature, as the professor would soon be, would be subject to all the sciences the world had to offer. He would never have peace.
That is when Augusto stood up, walked out of his the classroom, never to return; for the shrewd professor could not speak a language anymore, just some sounds, gestures, and he became the talk of the decade, until he committed suicide.


[Inspired by: Benjamin Szumskyj, constructed at the café bn. December 13, 2004]




4.

The Pallid Case of:
Nicolai Stein


I became good friends with Nicolai Stein. He was the son of a top chief in Paris, who was quite well off. But soon after I had gotten to know him, his parents had died mysteriously died that is, or so it seemed; and somehow he had lost or squandered away most—but not all—his inheritance they had left him; which was quite a sum I heard. And so he left his Paris home for the Island of Nantucket, off the coast of old Cape Cod. If you were to ask me why, I couldn’t tell you why he selected that particular island. This island is not huge by no means but has quite a long and enduring history for writers, whalers (of a century past), and artists of today, and so forth and so on. It has its beauty, its lighthouses, and its cobblestone streets, which add to its charm; and let’s not forget its coffeehouses and historic inns. So by virtue of a most pleasant location, I trust he made a good selection in settling there for, as he said, ‘…a season,’ and for his own reasons.
Nicolai had rented a hotel room at the Manton Coffin House, a stately three-story, brick mansion built in the mid-l800s. Oh yes, yes, it fit the gracious bygone world, and when he invited me to come live at the hotel—at his expense of course, and finish my book of poetry, I felt most obliged, and accepted immediately his kindly gesture; and upon my taking residence there I felt—for the most part, comfortable at once in this sixty-four guestroom complex; with all its modern amenities.
It was here, here where I got to know him quite well, quite well indeed (possibly too well), or at least, so I thought, for does anyone, anyone (emphatically I say!) really know anyone but himself, and seldom can we be sure of that over implication.
In Paris we had chummed about, but not much, although he took a liking to me. It took me a bit longer; I actually got to liking him more during the first month at the hotel. Nonetheless, I had learned quite quickly, He was reserved, and seemed well educated; although he had kept to himself pretty much while in Paris, that is to say, he preferred a quieter life style than I, we got along relatively well. Should you had followed him around on a daily basis (in Paris; as I look back now) I dare say you would find him with his little youthful friend, whom I will get to in a moment, but at the time I had categorized him as a kid of protégé of his, of some kind. But as I was about to say, you would have noticed he had a flood of mood changes more rapid than the blinking of stoplights. And when he was happy, he was ecstatically happy; and when sad, he was quite gray and gloomy, from his brow to his lowering of his eyes, to his hunchback positions.
But we had a few things in common, and this is where I feel he picked up a liking for me. He liked to read and write, and was the fastest reader I have yet to make acquaintance with. Nor would I care to compete with him in prose or poetry writing. He always had pens and paper and unfinished manuscripts lying about. Not sure if he ever finished anything, but they were there nevertheless. I had read some of his work and it was of a high quality, as I have said before, he was well learned but he wrote on things that to me were in the area of imaginary cosmogony, wondrous phenomena: beyond my comprehension; thus, I conclude, unique it may be but not any contribution to mankind or to me, so I left it silent and made no remarks to its value, just a few gestures of kindliness, to insure our friendship was cemented in good will.
As he walked about Paris, I had noticed he daydreamed feverously, almost to the point he’d get hit by a car had his friend not pulled him to safety a few times while leaving the curve too soon; much like here on Nantucket, apart from, the cars here are not as plentiful.
In Paris, He’d stop at his favored coffee shops, restaurants, like Café de Flora, etcetera: and have his double shot of caffeine, with a little hot milk on the side, and a piece of coffeecake. It was forever the same, a man of habit, as they say; solely predictable.
His youthful friend’s name, so I heard, was Sullivan. Not sure if that was a first or last name—surely Irish though; it was all he was called. No matter where he’d go, young Sullivan—I’d say about fifteen years old— young Sullivan would follow old Nicolai, like a bloodhound. It was only times when I was by him he’d tell Sullivan to go find something to do,--something to do, other than standby us; hence, insuring he was with me alone, for whatever purpose, for we did not talk of anything secret, or worthy of shooing him away.

I had been sleeping when Sullivan had opened the door to my room and woke me up, saying breakfast was about ready: then he proceeded to finish making the eggs and taste, coffee, for we three lived together in the hotel suite, with separate room of course, and a kitchenette, so as not to have to run to the restaurant all the time to eat.
Said he, “Nicolai will be home shortly,” it was close to noon now, and I had stayed up quite late reading the previous night.
After breakfast, Nicolai proceeded to tell me about his so called little experiment; he seemed quite happy and excited to tell me, trusting I’d concur with his way of thinking I’m sure. He had cross-bred a rabbit with a rat: “I want you to take a look at it Lee this morning if possible?” He asked humbly.
I put my coffee cup down on the table, replied with scientism: “Are such things possible?” He looked at me a little funny; you know those looks that say: ‘seeing is believing.’ He was quiet for the rest of the breakfast, and then afterwards he seemed too had gotten some kind manic rush into his system, or blood, insisting now I follow him to see his work of art. I had found myself saying, “Yes, yes, I’m coming,” as if we were going to the Opera, or some grand event about to take place within the hour, and we must not be late.


[Looking at the…] “Yes, yes, it really is something…” I admitted to him as he showed me this red serpent tongued creature, that had big eyes like an owl, and ears like a rabbit, teeth like a rats, tale like a cat. It sat upright, as if its spine was durable to the point of being able to bend and arch it at will, even more so than a human. The tongue was a foot long, while extended outside its mouth. Oh yes, it was a feeble looking creature; strange and pitiful; it had web feet which looked more like a hoof, than a bunny’s foot. It was all of three feet tall; perhaps seventy pounds.
Nicolai looked at me with a glare, I at him with mortification. The young boy was playing with—what I called in my mind—the hybrid, creature. Not knowing what to say, lost for words, and beyond, and I mean way beyond my own creative fascination; my mouth must had drooped a food, jaw and all. Nicolai could see I was dumbfounded and lost for words. A cold breeze seemed to fill the moment for us three, or was it four now, with the rodent-rabbit-creature on hand. Not knowing what to do, I simply buttoned up my sweater, for we were still in this old wooden structure on top of a hill, within the small town-let—; this barn of sorts, or meeting hall, with a construction date, dating back somewhere in the mid to late 1600s; thus, this old gray wooden building kept a chill within it.
Nicolai walked the creature back into his huge cage, it licked his cheek as if it was quite found of him, so much so, I was much taken I by it—some kind of sympathy, or thin-skinned nervousness, overtook me for a moment. I was a bit surprised in his tenderness towards the creature, but I put it aside for the moment, thinking briefly, owners of pets are often kinder to animals than to their fellow man, or can be. Although Nicolai was kind to me, I had never seen him kind to anyone else but Sullivan; he was quite flat with affect, in showing emotions.
Speechless, I started to walk out of the large gray structure, with its old wooden unvarnished floors. Spontaneously, Nicolai burped out of his mouth: “Stop…!” and I seemed to freeze, for some odd reason, some mental evocative force soared in my brain, a hypnotic strangeness buzzed through me, my nervous system stopped like a street car throwing on its breaks—I was blank. “How did you like my… [a pause] rabbit?” This was not a good time to evaluate friendship I told myself, but do I lie or tell the truth, at best, it was disgusting, at worse, I had not yet found the word in the dictionary.
“Nicolai,” I said with a kind of remorseless voice, “that is no rabbit, it is something but … only God, and maybe you know what!” This was not what he wanted to hear, by far—I was now witnessing the burning hurt within his breast. His face got red, his veins in his arms stuck out, his neck muscles seemed to go into contractions—in a beastly kind of way.
We now were outside the building and he was pacing, walking the length of the fence that surrounded the property, which was a good one hundred feet or more, back and forth. Never saying a word but occasionally looking at me as if all was not over. He was mumbling, saying something I couldn’t understand…a different language I’d expect, or so I concluded.


[Two weeks later] I had moved into another apartment room, and the boy had come out of his to talk to me in a nervous kind of way, saying: Nicolai was very sick, and would not get out of bed. I suggested he call the doctor, but for some reason that was out of the question. I should first explain why I moved into the apartment next to theirs, and not in their apartment room any longer. Nicolai, for some reason didn’t quite trust me anymore, for whatever he needed to trust me for I didn’t know at the time. In any case, he suggested I move out, and he’d pay the bill, for he didn’t want me to move back home, or leave the island, but again, I was not in his full confidence. So now I shall return to where I left off. As I was about to say, Sullivan was quite disturbed with Nicolai’s condition, and again, the doctor was out of the question, he [He being: the boy Sullivan] would not allow the doctor, any doctor or medics to visit him.
“What do you expect me to day?” I asked the lad.
Said the boy, with a quivering lip, “You see sir, Nicolai was very proud to show you Nicolai Junior, and I, I, think you hurt him.” The boy looked awful pale trying to tell me this. I looked at him as if he was on some kind of drug, having hallucinations.
“The Rabbit sir,” said the boy, “is my brother, and Nicolai is our father, we are all crossbred…but with alien blood…from the planet Moiromma, as well as human, we are trying to transform into a suitable human-form, and our experiments have not done us well.”
I looked aghast—“What!” said I, in disbelief; the boy didn’t like the way I looked at him now.
He continued, “My father is self procreating, he needs no female; yet, he can pregnant. And should the doctor see his system, it would be a trying life for him, my brother and me thereafter.”
“We were twins,” he continued, “…twins until after a few experiments, where I gained the human form, and he did not, he was much more of a rodent before than you know…” I said to myself, jokingly, a big mouse had bit him and made him ill, than I looked at his feet, they were fur, and webbed, like the creatures.

Written by Dennis L. Siluk [Started: 2/22/2005 completed 3/21/2005 /illustrated by Siluk]





5.


Tunnel of Stone


I now had waked from my sleep, I looked outside through a corner of my curtain, and day had broken. I went to see Mr. Hampton next door.

Of time, you know nothing of, but time knows a lot about old age. Youth has its pride, age has its wisdom, or so they say; but then, not in all cases. Life is liken to the tides of the sea; they come in, and they go out, a simple observance, philosophy if you will: if that is what it is; thus, another wave comes in, should you have the time to scrutinize it, should you be given the time that is. And as we all know, standing on the shore, big or small, the waves disappear from our sight; blemished into the sea as if they never were, but you seen them, seen them for a moment, just a flicker in the ripple of time, but you’ve seen them nonetheless, you were there, and should you wait for that same tide to return, you will wait forever, it will not return. It’s just the way it is, the way it’s always been, the way it will continue to be, like it or not. You may even say after a while: “Was it ever,” questioning your sanity. But you know deep down inside it was. Oh yes, you’re getting the picture, we are just waves in the sea, sort of.
And so the seasons come and go. The sun is high one day, the next there is no sun. Dogs bark, children cry. This morning when I woke up, dawn was spreading itself out like a carpet over my backyard. As I was saying, they come and go faster now it seems, the days, the dawn, the sounds of dogs barking and children crying:,—and the older we get, the more we realize our days are numbered and these sounds, fade, fade into oblivion, or get louder to where we cannot, or will not bare them, if you live to get old that is, most people will not reach my age, most people in the world that is, and few will see Mr. Hampton’s age. The cycle of time wipes out any hope or nonsense within humanity’s framed desire to return, they will not.

I had a dream this morning, eyes somewhat open at the last or third try—I say try, because I had the same dream three times it seems. Woke up three times, went back to sleep three times to finish it. Psychic Vampires in my dream I think, the Crown Prince of Hell tried to send his natives to, to find me, haunt me I assume. Everything is, ‘I think,’ for some odd reason, peculiar today, this morning, as if I sense something, a sixth-sense if you will, save for the fact, I didn’t know I had one, sixth-sense—that is. What is a ‘Psychotic Vampire,’ you ask? Simply one who drains another of his or her vital energy; no more, no less—I feel drained.
There were braggarts in my dreams also, maybe the Psychic Vampires; ones that are—those folks I say—that are with large egos, or in need to satisfy his/her larger ego; ones with impoverished egos, and in need to feed them. I know who they were I think.



I know I said it before, but I’ll say it again: it is the way things are, we are but waves in the so called, sea of humanity—life, in the cosmos, and so the seasons come and go. I am at Mr. Hampton’s door, next door—this very minute, no one answers; I—l am listening for sounds inside, never taking my eyes off, off the door, or the side window here, my hand seems to be quivering a bit, I wonder why?

[A pause in time]

—I have stood here now for a long moment, he is eighty-six years old—I know I said that before—wait, no I didn’t, thought I did, so what, I’m fifty-six, no, no, how about fifty-seven, yes, that is it; a generation apart, yup, two aging bodies linked by words, a fence, two houses, humanity in general, heaven and hell. It is all part of the picture, part of us, it—; it was all figured out long before either one of us were born. I don’t think God works, or even thinks in the mode we do: first the angels, then the world, then the animals, then humankind. I think somehow, someway it was all figured out long before the first blade of grass showed up on earth, and we are the residue of this—I shall call it God’s dream, His twinkling of an eye, or call it, His dimensional processing, I don’t know what else to call it. But here we are nonetheless, and yes, O yes, I am thankful…
—I just now opened his door, walking into the darkness; I’m standing in his living room [a long pause]. Now, now I’m in his bathroom, he’s on the floor, pants half down, he was trying to dress himself, must have had a stroke, heart attack, something of that nature; it happens all the time—:he is a bit warm, but dead. His face is waxed a ting, possibly been dead an hour, maybe two, possibly three—his death. His death produces room for another: that is what just went through my mind. Room, we need more room, but couldn’t God just make a bigger world; oh well, God has His reasons.
I’m trembling now, not sure why, but its cold in here, and it shouldn’t be, should it? My mind: ‘we’re like waves in the sea are we not, here then gone.’ I see dirt on the floor, kind of wet dirt, a path of it, leading down into the basement. Now, I’m taking step by step, creeping down these stairs. I can hear voices in the background, voices of vengeance, producing echoes.


From the stairway, and a few steps beyond, one can see, I can see some great black slimy shapes rising from the entrance, a wall and stone like entrance leading into a stone tunnel. There is vomit all about the entrance, like a struggle had taken place, and the person was dragged the rest of the way.
The shapes were delighted in their work; that is, refilling the tunnel with sand, and breaking down the stone walls to its original form; it’s that six sense I was talking about I have, my body absorbs their pulses to their diabolical dark laughter, the dreary doom inside their shadowy make up.
“Oh come forth in the name of Abandon,” says a voice, a voice with a smirk, a humorous jeer to its face, with its haunting like shape, shadowy shape.
“Come and feel the hot winds of Hell, from inside the tunnel?” He’s looking at me, with his skull like shape, empty skull with large eyes, and fire in them.
My throat just went dry my lungs sting like a bite from a scorpion’s bite.
“Hail Satan!” the voice of a huge shape just said [backed up by other shapes looking at one another]; another shape, and an uglier dark shape at that, said: “We are all the same, I and we, my and ours—all the same.” Then they all laughed at once, and continued to do their labor.

A voice comes now echoing back from far within the tunnel—I can hear it, it sounds like a million miles away; a million voices, turbulent voices as one—its funny, out of the mass, how I can hear a single voice [Mr. Hampton’s I think] sounds like he’s being rapped, torn apart by those beings. I can hear him sobbing, with moaning undulated pitch as his teeth chattered; these demonic shapes stretch along side of his; Now the shapes in the basement have just patched up the last part of the wall—resealing it. The last brick is now going in place, wait, I hear, “We go in hate, and we wait for you. When you come to die we’ll be there; to take you my friend, the same way, to the same place.” The hissing stops, the last brick are now put into place; they have gone, for they already have his soul. I think they wanted to put on a show though, a show for me.


I had passed out evidently, for when I woke up Mr. Hampton’s floor in the basement was full of my sweat—I must have lost twenty pounds: my cloths wet, the floor wet, the carpet I was on soaked, and there I was laying; it was now evening, I could see through the small windows that lead to the to the cellar, from outside; yes, it was all dark, but I knew it was the cellar not that other place, not the tunnel. It was all a dream, was it not? Or so I asked myself. I would ask you but I’d get no reply, so I am of course, just telling the story. I went back upstairs to see about Mr. Hampton’s body, it had not been moved, it was cold now, no warmth in his arms now, not like before. I called the police, but I was too afraid to tell anyone about the Stone Tunnel, that is, anyone but you.

Written October, 2004, revised, March, 2005





6.










The Fiends of Yogyakarta
Bustling at the Market










This story takes place in Central Java [1999]; the city of Yogyakarta, while visiting the archeological sites [old ruins] of Borobudur and Pramanan.



I, Dennis have very little hope that you will understand, still less, believe my incredible journey, the expedition I went through some five-years ago, or is it now six, perhaps it is, time soars between writing and rewriting, and somewhere in-between—in between, when you look at your journal, and its aging face—it’s a ting baffling. In any account, I wrote it all down on paper for I knew my memory would haunt me and I’d distort it later, had I not. For it did fade somewhat from my jittered nerves—shortly after the story took place. Some say I’m quite eccentric with this story, to the point of fleeing reality, and replacing it with too much subjectivity; and when it did happen, and it did happen: I thought such myself; it was madness, for it is hard to believe this true and frightful story from any corner of the world. In any case, to those none believers who confronted me shortly after these events, namely the media, ugliness is not imprisoned, it is free like us to roam wherever it please, and it did this one day, this day I’m about to share with you.
For the sake of the story I will use my middle name, Lee: somehow it seems less out of character that way. I had gone to visit a friend in Japan, in the summer of 1999; I had met her in Istanbul, Turkey in l996. I stayed there—in Japan—for about a week, seeing most of the sites, such as a tourist would do: going to the top of the Tokyo Tower, and taking a train to Kyoto where nearby there was an international sumo wrestling tournament going on, to which I attended and met some of the world famous wrestlers. And of course, going to the top of Mount Fuji thereafter; all in all it was a most wondrous trip, to say the least.
From there I went to the island of Guam, stayed a day and night there, and flew to Bali, where I stayed another three nights, and then on to Central Java, to the city of Yogyakarta. There I visited two sites, Borobudur, which is the largest Buddhist Shrine in the world (so I was told) made of somewhere around three million dark volcanic black bricks, over a natural mound. It is a marvel of ingenuity, for the world at large. And then I visited the temples at Pramanan, another breathtaking site. After two days of visiting these sites, I had three more days left. And this is where doubtful-reality may be replaced; but the story cannot be changed, nonetheless; no not one iota, not to appease the media, or another’s speculative witty and aphoristic scientific mind; really is what I will produce, not science, and be it a mystery of mysteries or not, so it shall be—even if it leads away from the practical world to the unbelievable.

Thus, it was on the second free day in Yogyakarta I received a letter down in the lobby, at the main desk, it read:

“For god’s sake, come out to this peculiar and beastly, haunting hotel [more like a motel]. Another night like this, in this wilderness, will make me snarl, if not go nutty.”
Frank Gunderson


That was enough for me. I was known to be a traveler of mysteries, or one looking for them, or so my reputation had preceded me often times. And Frank Gunderson also from the Midwest, was a writer like David Childress, whom I talked to once over the phone concerning some books and my house in Lima, which I was considering selling—and was considering going to Easter Island with his team, but could not, I had to wait because of business, but went the following month with just my wife, and there met the renowned Archeologist, Charlie Love, whom sat with my wife and I at a cozy outdoor café, and had a drink with discussing the moving of the huge statues on the island. Well, Frank was like Charlie in the sense he was always looking for the unusual, and often times found it. To be honest, I didn’t even know Frank was in country until I got the letter. On the back of it was where I was to go, and so I grabbed my small suitcase, some shaving gear, and took a train about one hundred miles south, there at the station was Frank with a jeep, waiting, and no sooner had I disembarked the train we were both off to this hotel, a hotel I’d bestow a macabre title to—soon.
As we rode into the tropical forest, harsh it was, like a picture of a lost world: Frank, he babbled on about something: ghosts, fiends—devils, the macabre world, I dare say. Then within forty-five minutes we were at a strange looking structure, he called, ‘The Hotel,’ it looked more like a black volcanic brick low-built house, with four main rooms to it. The roof was that of wooden beams supporting some kind of jungle shrubbery and bamboo shoots covering the whole top. The stones to the building were that of the stones used at Borobudur I noticed.
I can’t describe this story as I’d like, the horror of it is somewhat placed deep in my mind, and not as vivid as I’d like it to be. But I will write calmly, but try to believe me!

“You noticed it yet?” Frank said a few minutes into our walk to the motel, parking the jeep somewhat in the woods, not sure why; then he took me around to the back of the building and into each room (apartment-section that is). I had noticed two gravesites in the back of the building, but I didn’t inquire about them yet, not yet anyways, they looked fresh. After the tour around the building we went back to the back of the building again. I kind of laughed with some embarrassment and mumbled something like, ‘What kind of a rat trap did you bring me to?’ I mean he said it was a motel of sorts.
Frank then pointed towards the window panes, two of them on the right side of the building. They were smashed, destroyed as if something had hit them, broke them into pieces: matter of fact, it had just dawned on me, that none of the windows had glass in them, not one single one. And there were holes in the roof, as if an earthquake had taken place; and of course, I knew better.
“What in god’s name happened here,” I began.
“No,” he replied, adding, “it has nothing to do with god my friend.” He would not tell me completely what took place as to not spoil his pleasure, and mystery I do believe. I was dumbfounded, and curious, as you could tell in my voice.
“You don’t know, you just won’t understand, you got to stay until it happens again,” he told me—repeatedly. I didn’t see in the least what he meant, and followed him dumbly into his motel room. There we sat for three hours in the mucky heat, just sat and waited for whatever was supposed to happen, not a word said. Sat in the hole in the wall, sort of room: dirt on the floor, walls discolored with mud and blood and all kinds of debris; glass all over the place, and the roof—if you could call it that, and what was left of it—had the sun shining through it in several locations.
Then he jumped up—it caught me off guard and shook me up a bit. “Come on Lee, it’s starting,” he grabbed my arm and somewhat pulled me over to the door, then opened it slightly—just enough to look out, and then had me look out alongside of him, but I didn’t see anything, and I was getting this endless irritation coupled with suspicion, that I wasn’t going to. And out of the sky, just like that, suddenly came a rock, then several followed right in the row: small, big, medium size, all bombarding the building, one after the other. Then they came faster and faster, more and more, larger and larger. I had to duck, as he shut the door, and bolted it. I gasped.
“What kind of trick is this,” I asked Frank.
“No tricks,” he said, adding, “The fiends [devils], the fiends, they are throwing them from out of the sky.”
“What!” I replied, feeling this was a bunch of malarkey.
“The Ghoul’s are mad at me, the devils themselves, I’ve made fun of them, to get them to show their faces and this is what they do.” I shook my head, but they were coming from the sky nonetheless, what could I say [?]
“I, I insulted them did you,” he repeated; “Oh yes, I was mighty good at that too.”
Then all of a sudden a huge bolder came through the roof, it must had been two-hundred pounds, then half the roof caved in.
“We got to get out of here,” I told Frank.
“What!” he questioned me, “out of here, why?” then he cursed them loudly, calling them every name under the sun, and shaking his defiant fists at them from out of the window. He then threw his keys to the jeep at me, and told me to run for it, and he’d stop for a minute his cursing and that would puzzle the fiends: thus, and I ran like the dickens out into the bombarding environment to the Jeep.

I had made it back to the train station and eventually back to the city. Alas! Frank never wrote me again, I never heard of him or seen him from that day on. No one ever heard of him again to be exact. Pityingly the folks went out looking for him for a number of days, but could find no trace of him. And the building was almost totally demolished; the whole structure looked like they were bombarded by heavy artillery. The inhabitants of that area say it took two weeks clearing up everything.



7.

Kisses in Antique, Guatemala






[Summer of 2000 AD] Jonathon told me yesterday, I think it was yesterday, perhaps the day before yesterday, that I was not walking a down the usual side street, and crossing the corner where I normally crossed to get into the park area—thus, appearing when coming to the plaza, as one might expect—as he was used to seeing me; rather I came directly through the plaza area—from a different side street, if not more direct for me—it puzzled him; yet, it was why I bumped into him [Him being: Jonathon], but he was looking of course in the wrong direction—he is man habit as you may have guessed.
In any case, we sat in the plaza area, in Antique, Guatemala. He’s forty-two years old, takes a picture of a police officer—movie star—then she tells him to take her home; that is, to give her a ride back to her hotel: she’s Connie. She thinks, he thinks she’s a cop
(Now follow me closely here). She likes him, I mean really likes him, or so he says she does: but you know women, they can fool the best of men, perhaps they have to, you know, survival skills. It really was a joke though, or so it started out to be, but during the meeting he tells her about his travels and troubles: you know his struggles in life. Whoever knows Jonathon knows he’s a millionaire, and an avid writer. I tell him, “Life is meant to live Jonathon, so live it.” He kisses her, so he says: he got a car and, well, says to her: “You got to do what you got to do.” Referring to her, you only have so much time on earth, so (go) do it. —she’s looking out the window, a car drives by, then here he comes: boom! Suddenly appears Jonathan and Connie in her apartment at the hotel—he’s still thinking she’s a cop, but it’s a joke remember, she’s an actress I think—so I’ve heard, and this is a pretty solid rumor. He just walked in on a scene, he thought she was a stage, the cop, and no one said a word, not even Connie, and whatever scene they were playing just continued as if on a roller coaster. Jonathon was simply on one of his many vacations down here (down here: is, in Antigua, Guatemala, in this lovely old park with a water fountain in the center, as its seems most Latin American cities have in their plazas; the sun is hot, and there really is not much shade, other than by the surrounding buildings that have overhead protection); as I was saying, Jonathon was on vacation, like I am, that is, we both come down here all the time, or better put, most of my free time, and we bump into each other now and then, off and on, as one might say, like today, today is one of those days.
She’s looking out the window now, as I had mentioned before, just staring I guess, gazing: feeling those instinctive vibes enter her body—her moods are interesting, they start calmly, I say start, and here comes her friend—and he, he accidentally kills him, Jonathan kills the friend. She’s of course devastated, and all Jonathan can remember her saying is: “He tells me (the boyfriend) of all the rich and famous people he knows, and, and you, you Jonathon are one.”
That’s all she says, oh she did say one other thing, “…of all the entire lot, of all the entire great people [a pause]: have they lived?” not sure if that was a statement or a question, she adds: “Who will remember them?” —you see her moods; she has emptiness, confusion, blankness—embedded into here carefree attitude, her mood shifts quicker than the suns rays, and for the moment possible an absence of inner meaning.

—Says he: “It’s hot, very hot today. The police are there now, you know Lee, just checking out the scene—‘so he tells me. I mean the real police, she told me she was not, and that is, she said she really was an actress. But when he comes in, the boyfriend, he pulled out a gun, it looked real, so she says, or tells me so: ‘I hit him, and hit him,’ she says, until Connie said, said it was another joke. You understand, right?”
Said I, “Not quite, I don’t fully understand and it seems to me she is having an inner struggle with it herself, but then who am anyhow, I’m just listening to your story. How come you’re not back at the police station, or the hotel?”
“No reason to be, she went back to the states, Hollywood, finish the picture.”
“Oh,” said I.
“I don’t really think Lee, you fully understand (he’s right for once, I don’t). I like this old area, it has a lot of shops, and this water fountain, I can write well here—: you know all these Latin American places have these fountains in the plazas. I like that; I can walk around and write.” She seems to be repeating herself; in any case, I am aware of the steps she is trying to take forward with this situation.
Said I [confused]: “I don’t understand is right, but I’m seeing you’re trying to explain it.”
“No you don’t understand it happened three months ago.” Yes I do now feel a bit lost, I don’t need to say this out-loud though, her instinct is good enough for her to see I’m lost, and my silent and involuntary communication will explain—whatever part is next.
“Why then are you telling me now?”
“I married the girl a few weeks ago, we both live in the hotel where I killed the guy, the friend, maybe he was more than a friend, I don’t really know.”
“Yaw, so what, I hope you’re happy; married haw?”
“Yap, married, married all the way; I had to marry her or else she’d tell the police, the real police I killed him. He didn’t have a real gun you know, not really.”
“No, I didn’t know, not really (so many deletions).”
“Well, he didn’t, and she told the police he tried to rape her. And she knew it was an accident, but she got this notion from him to get to know big movie stars, and I asked her how I could help, and she said, ‘marry me.’ And so I did.”
“Just like that?”
“She said dead is dead, no one could bring him back to life…,” and it was really an accident, and it was; a joke that led into a fatal accident you might say, but an accident none-the-less. And to tell you the truth she was partially right. Where would justice take this, to what level? I do feel bad, yet he is known as a rapist now, you know, a bad stigma to it, a cursed label one might say. But again, dead is dead. What do you think on this…about this?”
“Why you telling me, or asking me?”
“Oh, not sure, you were always a good listener, gave advice. You see I really do not want to be married to her. I’d rather help her out with her career, give her some money, and be done with it; she’s always gone during the day, and once a month goes to the states to make movies, but I never see her in them. I feel haunted, and she likes that damn hotel room also.”
“Advise haw, I think you already know what you want to do, it is just how, when, and where.”
“Am I wrong Lee, you know, for wanting to get out of this situation?”
“You mean, divorce?”
“I guess that’s part of it.”
“To be frank with you, you both were wrong from the word go, and that other guy didn’t help things out.” (A long pause: if anything my friend was vividly himself, truthful, he just has to realize he has to go through an experience, the only thing I was hoping was he’d not withhold, its hard to help when one does) “What did he look like?”
“Not that it matters, but he was about five foot seven, she’s about five foot three, and he’s real thin, very light-white skin. Blond hair, and she’s a lovely, I mean attractive redhead. He has pin like eyes, seemingly close to one another as if the nose was going to swallow them up someday, I think that is because the bridge of his nose is so thin. And she kind of has a small ski-jump for a nose—a small ski-jump that is; not much of a bottom lip and nice breasts though—she’s pâté and cut, like a doll, a healthy one I might say.”
“They almost seem like a team, made for each other. Where’s he buried. I suppose they took him home to: wherever?”
“To be quite honest, he is buried here, right here, or I should say, out side the city in the cemetery. She wanted it like that, so his family wouldn’t investigate.”
“That’s odd.”
“Odd…why’s that?”

(Lee pulled out a can of coke from his coat pocket opens it up and starts to drink it down—gulp it down, the heat is almost on top of them, his hat keeps the his face shaded though.)

“Odd, means abnormal, or you could say: weird, or you could say—strange, eccentric, bizarre, take your pick.”
“Why’s that?”
“Why’s what? …odd, strange or abnormal, or all them other words!”
“Why do any of them come to your attention?”
“In a like manner, why don’t any of them come to yours?”
“I think Lee you are doing one of those old psychological tricks on my head. Speak up; tell me what the eye-opener is?”
“How much money did you give her?”
“She’s my wife; she has my bank account, whatever she wants I suppose, she says she takes money for this and that, you know the normal things.”
“Checking account, with an ATM card…normal things?”
“Well—, I have one, ATM card…if that is what you’re asking.”
“Borrow me $300…that’s a statement my friend not a question.”
“Why, I, I mean sure, let me go to the ATM and get it.”
“I’ll wait here, bring back a receipt, I want to see how much you got in your account—you see I got instincts also (he looked at me strangely, or was it eccentrically…not sure).”

[Twelve minutes pass; Jonathon returns; now he is looking at his slip from the ATM, checking how much he has in his account. Walking back to the plaza area where Lee is still sitting on a bench waiting; he looks at the white pillared building to his left, and the fountain in front of him, glances back at the slip, and the more he looks at the slip the other things become less interesting.]


Said I, as he approached: “Well?”
“Lee, I think something is wrong…!”
“Now what could that be?” (Jonathon looking over his $300 dollars and slip from the ATM [money machine).
“I mean Lee, I keep a (another pause), oh I guess I can tell you, about $750,000-dollars in my checking account, and my savings has $1.3-million. Here it says I have $7,900; can’t be right.”
“Jonathon! Sit down, we’ll talk a bit more, first of all it can be right, and you are just hopeful it isn’t—does a kangaroo jump?”
“Yes…I mean I don’t know what I mean.”
“Dead is not always dead. I saw a group of people walk into the café down the road a bit—before I met you today, that’s why I asked you for the descriptions of the dead man, and your wife. I would guess they are drinking a beer right now in that cantina. And I’d guess your savings is depleted, meaning my friend, the slip is right, they’ve been living high off your money, as they are now.”
“No, no I don’t believe it.”
“Of course you don’t, it’s hard to swallow, rationally swallow it that is, swallowing all at once that is; it would be like a snake trying to swallow a cow all at once, and it takes time. Take your time, we got all day to swallow, and all night, and if you need more time, tomorrow you can swallow some more.” His face was read; tears were filling the corners of his eyes.

Said Henry (letting out a deep breath, as if he held it in long enough, held it in long enough to cough it out: couldn’t hold it in anymore; standing up from the bench in the plaza now) he said:

“That was quite an interesting story Lee.”

Said I, “That was the last time I saw Jonathon, that afternoon. He went racing down to the bar; I guess he did find them both having a drink. I’m not sure whatever happened to him, I never saw him come out of the bar, and I never went in looking for him. That was, oh let me think, four years ago. But I heard tell when he got into the bar, a police officer saw him, and mistook him for a robber, and shot him dead.”

Notes: Written 12/23/03; originally the first part of this was from a dream, 12/18/03. I kept the original name; I had also spent time in that area described in the story [reviewed and edited, 5/2004]. Revised, 3/05. Reedited and descriptively, slightly revised, 1/2006.



8.


Black Bubble
[The Dread of the Yukon]










Introductory Chapter
(1897—Psudoarchaeology)



The Restless

A monotonous restlessness, likened to the hunger of a bear coming out of hyphenation came over Professor Robert Spellvice. He was famished for adventure; and his objective was a hidden archeological site in the upper Yukon region, in Canada. He could not brace himself to call Lowell, his good friend of a few previous trips, to join him, rather he quickly ran over to his house and presented him with the an offer face to face—ecstatically (as always), with all expenses paid, and bonus’, should he keep him company in the Yukon and Arctic. And as usual, Lowell McWilliams agreed. Thus, they spent long hours in preparation for the trip, checking maps and getting all the information they could on the region, and the “Lost Mound City,” the city they had heard about, and tried to find twice before; but this time, this time for sure, he seemed to have a clearer vision of where it might be—that is, Professor Spellvice.

It was now the summer of 1897, I watched my wife’s passive face as I prepared with the Professor to go on our journey. She said, putting her hand upon my shoulder as I crossed the room,
“It would be nice, very nice if you asked Robert for the bonus soon, or bonus’ ahead of time so I have some extra money while you are gone? “
I said with a trying voice, “Naturally,” then added, “I’ll ask tomorrow, He’ll be more open to it then.”
It involved discussing things the Professor didn’t care to, especially at such a late date—prior to a trip that is, but he knew my wife quite well, and knew she’d stop me from going should he not give it in, in advance.
She added, “Let him know, there is always the secure job at the University…!” I answered, “And all the books of reference I would have to go through, this is a good time to take a leave of absence for me, I suppose.”
Our eyes met, as I stammered in my attempts to avoid her, she had hypnotic eyes; our marriage had belonged to the foolish whims of the city’s societies; which I deplored, detested. But like always she got her way. Her influence over me was steeped so high I felt captured inside her somber doctrine; akin to being crushed inside of a book. It was a blessing to get away for four or five months—or perhaps longer. Our eyes now made pretence, stupidly pretences, she was unexpressed. Then out of some kind of nervousness I laughed, turning my face.


[The site] Upon their return that summer, both Lowell and Professor Spellvice had had a most interesting story to tell the media, but it wasn’t taken seriously. Let me explain. They said: they had discovered in the thick of a wooded area in the upper region of the Yukon this mounded city, or city on a mound of sorts, and showed sketched outlines of a modest, but multiple and permanent structure, one Lowell had drawn sketches of. It was much more than a temple site, the Professor proclaimed, and one mound alone was over forty-feet high, with a flat top. Another one was not so high but consumed twice its square footage. And there were several other smaller mounds within the vicinity, with roads that lead in-between them.
Their maps had been destroyed for the most part, during a tip a while back, when their boat, going down river on their way back to the lower states, flipped over; thus making their story a bit more ambiguous, or unbelievable to the already hazy scientific archeological crowd.
He [He being: Professor Spellvice] told the archeological society in the city, he told them about the bones he had found of passenger pigeons, humans, animals; and the pits, which he felt were used for storing food—; hence, it showed ‘a domestic routine,’ so he said to the onlookers in the theatre, during his briefing. He also explained he had found cooking utensils and seeds; sandstone saws, and bone needles, all lost of course during the submerging of the boat in the river.
They had excavated the site for a month, and then had to head on back before the winter freeze came down from the arctic…as a result, locking them in. He proclaimed the sites middle age was perhaps AD 300. And wherein he did find a few rare dishes in the shapes of sharks and bison, feeling this village had some contact in trade with the lower southern states, like Florida. No one would gave him a once of credence. Thereafter, He told Lowell, year after year,
“I had my day in the sun I suppose that will have to do, even if they do not believe me, it is a fact and someone in future time will have to uncover it; when people are more open minded.”



1


The Decision
And the Journey



The Witch Speaketh

Once witches danced
To plenilunal magic
With weak souls to molest—;
Ah! Yes—way back when?
When—witches robbed men
Of virtue and piousness.


[July, AD 1909] I’m over fifty, and Shauna, over forty, she’s more on the order of being, so-so in her ways than I, so-so meaning, you never know, and she can be very stern if not given her way. My illness is of a peculiar order—I’ve thought possibly she gave it to me—my wife, if in deed, one can give illnesses to another—, I’d not put it past her; and the question is: could I go there without becoming fragmented and hurting someone in a panic state as I often get—nowadays—because of the blame damn illness?
This illness, no one has a name for but is of some neurological makings, with side effects that disturb the emotional makeup of a person; she, my wife that is, thought I’d be fine, or so she stated to me, to everybody; stated also, as if she was the doctor, that I’d not hurt myself intentionally. I even mentioned—fruitlessly—even death by a hundred different reasons could occur, should I go on this long venture into the arctic. Again I repeat myself: she was indifferent to these worries of mine saying:
“’A chain isn’t any stronger than its weakest link,’ and you are not the weakest link.”’
Then she told me I had to get ready on preparation for the trip, saying:
“All pleasure and no work, makes a butcher cut his self.”
And I said, “You can’t teach old dog new tricks.”
And she said, “You can teach a young one, willing most anything.”
Yes, oh yes, I got the message loud and clear.

My work used to be rather trying I agree, as I spent much time in the Yukon years ago—it did take the humdrum of life out of life, now a professor at the University, with cross-cultural clients from every walk of life, for I teach psychology, and yes, I could use a trip, but can this old dog take the cold like he use to, that was my thoughts: I mean giving an old dog a new name, only means you don’t have to hang him, he’ll kill himself in the wild Yukon, saving you the trouble.
“Robert doesn’t mention any one but you, Lowell,” was Shauna’s rejoinder.
“I gather he’s lonely for travel, or so I expect?” said I in return.
Incidentally, she looked at me as if I was out of my mind, turning toward the window, out of my mind for not taking the job I suppose; it was obvious she was dumbfounded in my lack of interest in joining him again on a surprise journey to the Yukon—it was fifteen-years since we had last been there. She didn’t push the menu, I might add, but she wanted me to take the invitation, she was acting timid, and that is not her statuette. Robert has what I would call—a not worth mentioning, personality. But he has money, influence, and it pays the bills; or used to. He also has blood shot eyes most of the time: likes to drink you know, like a fish out of water; his expression is dull, dim and flat, and he’s 61, too old for such nonsense.
I think of the barren spacious Yukon, its cold roomy—lengthily landscape rouged terrain, a feather of the devil’s wing, where you can’t find much to eat, hard to sleep, and it does not have hot baths. I’ve been in the Yukon, as well as the far Arctic, it is no dream trip at our ages, or for that matter, at any age, so I feel.
Wealth flashed across my wife’s face, yes, oh yes, indeed it did, the professor enticed her, the unscrupulous professor made it worth her time to intimidate me, save, no one can do it better than he, except my wife herself: the fine things of life it would buy, he shoved in front of her enigmatic, paranormal face; after the expedition she’d be the queen of the city, sort of speaking; and the truth, the real fact of the matter is, I could rest for a year or two, in a quiet work-room and just write poetry, with a perfect cup of coffee, or tea each day, instead of that same old, same old crap. Sure, sure, there is a good point about his, I admit, a good point undeniably, and not many people would be demanding my every minute once I got back once on the trip of course, and it would be only a four month period, that is: endeavor—but—but I say again, it is too demanding; and so the Professor asked me to go along with him, Professor Robert Spellvice; ‘why?’ to look for old bones, old mammal bones, in the Yukon, and perhaps that old archeological site: ‘The Lost Mound City’; this is not my cup of tea at fifty-seven years old; not anymore anyway. But if I stay around here, it will be a long winter with my wife, I grant you that, a long, long winter, and I can tell you, short in days can be long in months with her; if she doesn’t make me into a toad in the mean time that is. Like I said, there are points to this, I admit, more variables the more concentration I put into this decision.
“I spoke with him yesterday, and he really wants you to go Lowell, he said: he wanted your answer today, and not a ‘no,’ informing me he’d give you three times your wages you now get at the university, three times I say, can you hear me, three times: along with a big bonus once completed; and he can acquire a leave of absence for you without any issues raised…?”
I found myself gazing in the dullness of my library: eyes in a pause, looking at my wife, but not saying a word.
I spoke at length with her about how long we’d be gone—feeling it was too long of a time, and exactly how much was he offering; but with the same breath, I added: not matter what it was, it was not worth it, and the books that would be written thereafter, and the royalties, was still more work to be done—implying: it was not as simply as she was making it out to be, and I wanted to retire for the most part; I had written twenty-nine books (for god sake how many more must a man write to prove his worth?).
Shauna did not budge from her insistence in that I should go, nor move from the archway of our library, as I expected. She kept her dark green eyes on me, a mist formed around her, like a black bubble, it often did when she was thinking hard, thinking and not wanting anyone unexpectantly into her safety zone, for some reason, as if I could, or someone might be able to, read her thoughts; it was her compilation of hidden knowledge in witchcraft I was witnessing, and skeptical about: should I not agree to do it, I might end up doing it anyhow as it may appear to me—with her art of magic that is, I could end up believing I wanted to in the first place, and by the time the spell would fade, I’d be in the Yukon waking up from her spell.
I didn’t know she was a witch when I married her; it came out when she healed me with some herb from a stupid shrub of scurvy, or whatever I had back then, back in l886, if I recall right. I fought it, but it didn’t’ do much good until I returned and she hurled on me her unexplained, delightful enchantment, along with that herb from the shrub.
Oh, that isn’t all, in the Yukon, there are deep dizzy mountains, deathlike, and graves here and there of those before you that tired to find their fortune in it. I scrabbled and mucked like a slave them days. It is the cruelest land that I know. Yes, there is beauty also, the big husky sun, the stars tumble about at night; the caribou run in the wild, it is fresh, silent, a magical kind of stillness to it also, and a good portion of it is unpeopled; but there are hardships that nobody reckons; keep it, I will take a hot bath and think about those who wish to go back to that world, should I have such a pleasure in making the decision not to, but I fear not
instead of me inviting it hopefully, as an alternative, I told her I’d try to look forward to it, but I only did so in the mist of despair, a kind of creeping one at that.
Here I was to enter a world of fog and slush, gloom and cold; these melancholy thoughts I must put aside. Now she went into her room, with that impassive face, an evil woman, she can be—.


[Interlude I] Lowell’s mind was now free for the moment, having Shauna’s spell and demand packed away, thus he lost the fearfulness that was lingering within his stomach, his intestines, his head and spine—the uneasiness she could provoke upon and within his system, make it endure should he defy her. Now he committed himself to the irretrievable blunder to be, which lay ahead of him: or so he felt it would turn out to be; he devoted long hours to getting in shape the following two months, for the September trip. He lost over ten pounds, put on some muscle in its place. Found new maps of the Yukon, and Arctic regions, for they’d be in both areas before their trip was over, he expected; he was never losing hope the Professor would cancel the trip, and perhaps go in the summer months, but he didn’t. He packed away for the trip a few books, one by George Sterling of poetry; he liked his imagination, his descriptiveness: a great poet out of California; and another one by Gertrude Stein.
It seemed to him, that Professor Spellvice had not done any extraordinary preparation for the long enduring trip that lay ahead of them, which required specialization for the most part, consequently, Lowell was baffled. His head was whirling with conflict and contradiction of this idleness. Did he think the Yukon, or the Arctic was summer year round? I mean, he wasn’t the man he was fifteen-years ago, or twenty-five years ago when they had made their first of several trips to the enduring North. Perhaps the Professor had bones and artifacts in general on his mind so much he forgot that it gets sixty to eighty below zero up there, should they not make it back before winter; and he was playing a most dangerous game trying to beat the cold and freezing up of the lakes and rivers by going in late September. So these were Lowell’s thoughts. In addition, He felt the Professor could lose twenty-pounds, minimum, which would do him well; scrape off that pot belly of his; he was only five foot six inches tall, and his belly lapped over his belt like rolls on a pig, he must had been 190-pounds. He also had a black beard and his back and arms, legs and all was hairy like an ape.
By and large, Lowell McWilliams was in a state of addlement [becoming rotten] when he met the day he and the professor were to take the train from Minnesota to the Canadian boarder; and then onto the Yukon, to Dawson to get supplies, and all the way to the Arctic, and perhaps even to Mackenzie Bay [which was not on the agenda, but in the back of the professors mind which would add another four or five months to the trip back and forth, but should he had told Lowell, it would have only made matters worse]. Both Lowell and Professor Spellvice were aware Peary had made it to the North Pole [April 6, 1909] by sledge, and it may have had inspired Spellvice to make the trip before winter, and not the summer of the following year, or at least that is what came to mind for Lowell. But Lowell was more interested in the possibility of the fight that was to take place with Jack Johnson, come the summer of next year [1910], on July 4th, thus leaving in August of 1910, would had been excellent for him.



2







The Yukon,
Arctic:
Lake and Glacier


The Raw Arctic

I have seen its vastness—
A lonely land I know;
On its silent splendor,
Its beauty: strung my soul!...


For the first several weeks nobody spoke unless there was an absolute need to, and Lowell chopped ice as they shifted through the waters, his ores heavy with ice, cliffs all about him. Lowell wanted to turn about a hundred times, but his will refused his mind and bodies better judgment. And Professor Spellvice, whom never swore, learned how to somehow, during this trip, as the river became more dangerous, he became more exhausted. Lowell got thinking about this time: ‘…for some odd reason, it would seem each man wants to prove something in his life before he dies, and thus, puts life and limb in harms way if need be, heart and soul into it also, at the pain of putting others in harms way, and this was one of those times for the professor.’ It seemed that, each man had reached his breaking-point during this journey, but jerked back from pulling their revolvers out and shooting the other.
During the evenings in camp, each would take their turns with some kind of hesitated and short hysterical laugh, and a few hours later they’d both be fast asleep; a way of releasing the pressure of the long hatchet struggle in the Yukon. One blamed the other for whatever anguish had rested on their soul, that day, but by nightfall it usually was forgotten, and by morning after a cup of coffee, it was time to loosen-up the stiffen muscles and the ache of moving from the sleep of fatigue of the night before.


[The Glacier]


As we trudged on through and over the frozen ocean below us, with islands all around us, the Arctic gulls overhead; the ravens and White-Tailed Eagles, from European stock, perched on rocks unreachable, we were spellbound with the marvelous sightings that were taken place. During our first stages of the trip we were typically searching for anything and everything that caught our eyes, we found the beaver hard at work, the Lemmings, and other small mammals. Wondering over ice we spotted the magnificent polar bears; a few raised their heads to sniff the air for danger, we were their prey on a few occasions, and set our adrenalin in high mode, but a few shots in the air with our guns, scared them off, and allowed my shivering spine to settle…

—[Lowell was now lost in a day-dreaming mode]… it was some years ago, I and the professor had taken a trip up to the Chuck chi sea, by Barrow, Alaska, the unique and massive walrus’ were plentiful in that area. They walk on their front flippers, like seals. They prefer shallow water and we were up there in June, when everything is opened up for about six weeks, before the ice starts setting in again. In any case, they lounge on the land or ice in the Arctic all twenty feet of them, and 1500 pounds. I know they like clams, I saw them trying to suck them dry. And by Point Lay, where we stopped for a few days—a mail stop; I had purchased an old whale bone cut into the shape of a walrus. But there, nearby, was also a gravesite I’ll never forget; it was full of dead walruses. Their tusks still protruding from their heads; ah, yes, both male and females have tusks…


[‘…wake up…!’ someone said…’] and then it came upon me, a glacier, we’re on a damn glacier…needed to cross this glacier: four hundred feet of thick ice here: a frozen river you might say. I heard a whisper behind me, a strained voice, and tense: like it was gasping for air, it must have been Robert who woke me up. The sun was out this day, and it touched the chilled stiff snow around us: it was welcomed; it warmed my still flowing blood. As I looked in the back of me, I could see Robert tugging along, the sleigh tracks, dog tracks, and footsteps in the snow. They all looked lonely being left behind as we went forward.
My glance was almost over when I saw Robert’s face, it was twisted somewhat, as if he had a stroke, or it was frozen in place. I nausea on his countenance told me he was sick, not well at all, and getting sicker. He was not geared for this trip; it was all too much for him. But what can you say when your in the middle of a hurricane, it is to late, you got to do the best you can.
Now being on the glacier, I heard a crackling sound. All about us were deep crevices, fissures that went twenty feet deep, if not farther. It seemed to have an endless bulk to it; a ruptured face.
“You ok professor?” I asked. I calculated in the back of my mind, he’d not last this trip, if at all another month, or even a week; it was too trying for him. The sweat from his brow, he wiped off with his bandana tied around his neck. We were now at a standstill.
“I’m good for a few more miles, let’s get off this glacier and camp…!” he puffed out with all the reserved energy he had left in his stomach to push the words out.
“Get a moven,” I screamed at the dogs, as we both pushed the sleigh to help them; I pulled in the slack I had allowed when we had stopped.
As we neared the edge of the glacier, it got jerky under our feet, and then some of its edge crumbled into the water below us—that is, some three hundred yards now in front of us. I held my fingers tight on the leather reins and steered the sleigh to the shore line some one hundred yards to the side of us.

“I didn’t think I’d make it…” said the professor. It was difficult work, these several minutes it took to shift the sleigh around, and run with the dogs and the sleigh over the rough terrain of this glacier while the thunder of its edges breaking off and falling some two hundred feet below us: shook our spines to a heighten state. But now we were on shore, and this looked like a good place to make camp, and we did.


[The Lake]

It was on the fifty-day, they had woke up, finished with the coffee, it was a gray, almost ink dark mist, yet, Lowell rolled up the sagging tent, said to Robert, “Come on, we got to get across the lake before it freezes up; it was thirty-below, and as they started to cross the lake the wind started to freeze up Robert’s cheeks and nose, when he touched them, they were froze hard like an ice-cube. He stopped rowing, left the ore by itself as he pulled his gloves off to warm his face with his own fleshly hands, and warm circulating blood. Thus, as they floated down the swift river, shore-ice extended out into the lake and it was hitting the boat as it broke from its main sheet. Lowell didn’t see Robert, he was starting a fire in the little iron stove they had in the boat, for it was to be a six hour trip across the lake, and into the river; which would bring them to a landing point, just before the water falls; consequently, his back was turned to him. Professor Spellvice, was beyond fatigue, and was now rubbing his face, it was dead tissue he was rubbing, tissue that was frost bitten: turning white; his ore had slipped gently into the lake, there was one left, it remained connected to the boat on the other side, then all movement ceased—they hit a big rock in the middle of the lake, the professor fell forward onto Lowell’s back, he was in extreme anxiety: “I’ll sure go back now,” his eyes bulging out of their sockets: then apologized to Lowell for taking him into this ‘forsaken land,’ hunting for old bones and artifacts, and suchlike; then like a sack of potatoes, he fell limp: dead to the world. What had come over him, Lowell didn’t know there were no real signs that had forecasted such a quick expiration.
Lowell had food, some gold-dust they had traded for dollars in Dawson, just incase they needed to buy some camp items along the way, should they find someone willing to sell them, along with meat or other needed items, hence, dollars would not hold the value as gold would. He knew he had flour, some beef-jerky, a few tin goods; as he looked about the boat; then he noticed he had one ore. The shore was about a mile away; he’d turn the boat that way, but didn’t have to, it seemed somehow to turn by itself in that direction compelled to go that way he told himself—“Why?” He then pulled out a bottle of whiskey, took a few drinks, after thawing out his mustache a bit, to get the bottle: under and up onto his lips, and in his mouth, thus, pushing the remaining ice out of the way. He looked at old Professor Spellvice, “So-long, old chap!” he said with a regretful-ness, while his red-hot stove gave him new vitality.
It was getting colder, for he spit in the air and it froze before it hit the ice in the lake. “It’s getting colder all the time…” he told the stove, as if it had a mind of its own, rubbing his bare hands to the warmth of its flames, turning now and then to the back of the boat looking at the Spellvice humped over like a lump of lard, chin on his chest.
“Ssh!” he said aloud. He heard a woman’s voice from the shore; he could see the shore now. “Huh!” said he, in a whisper to himself. For some reason, Shauna did not occur to him that the voice coming from the shore was hers, or could be; it was some other woman’s. As his boat oddly enough was being pulled to shore by some hidden force, the snow in this areas was feet thick, deep snow he noticed. ‘Nobody could live up here,’ he told himself, the stove now dim, almost spark-less, ‘…only the devil,’ he added to his monologue. He felt his legs and knees, he knew his muscles were still strong with warm circulating blood; hence, he could trudge along the snow for a few days once ashore, but he needed to find a log cabin—sooner or later—and wait out the winter. There was no way of going back. He’d bury the old professor in spring, when he’d make his way back across the lake; it would freeze over soon—the lake that is, if not this evening, surely tomorrow or the following day.


[Interlude II] Lowell loved beauty, be it in nature as it was in the North Country here, or in women, for his wife was most beautiful, or in poetry; and now, once more the great north had provided this beauty for him. He and the professor, if they had enjoyed anything together on this trip, it was in the gazing into the magic of its bountiful landscape, it silent nights, its overpowering vastness; it stirred within him, profoundly, within both of them. It seemed to fill the blank pages of Lowell’s mind, those that had been gathering for so many years. These past several weeks he had sung to himself aloud, something he had not done for a very long time. The landscape illuminated both the professor and him, although the professor seemed to have experienced darkness because of his avidly unpreparedness for the trip, he did find time to absorb its wondrous beauty. But now he was gone—forever, a sad case at best, thought Lowell. And what Lowell didn’t know was that: under all those cloths the professor’s had on, he was sweating out the stress and strain he had carried a thousand miles while on this trip; his shirt clung to his shoulders from the sweat.



3



Reaching land
And the

Fate beckoned Lowell McWilliams, one might say, for on the cold desert like sheet of ice came echoes sliding to his ears, echoes from a Polar Eskimo, in this geographical isolated land. Oaassaaluk, a seer of sort whose husband was an Eskimo like her, and hunter and the master seer, was now alone with her children by her side, all waiting along the coast with their traditional sledge of: whalebone joined together with sealskin, no rivets or nails. They had journeyed a long way. She was now moving briskly with her dogs along side her—dogs which were restlessly guarding her, as well as useful for the sleigh. Now the shore passed quickly before Lowell’s eyes, catching the glimpse of the female Eskimo. She had two young children by her side, along with the four dogs, he noticed; she was small framed, yet pretty—an eye catcher he told himself. Build strong with a round face, almost harmless, but for some odd reason, he knew she wasn’t; I mean, how could she be harmless and with two children in the frozen North like this, waiting by a shore of ice in ten below zero weather.
She had willed the boat over. He could now see the roof of her tent, plus she had been cooking something. The atmosphere looked good, he was hungry, more than hungry, he was next to starving, and he had a dead body to look after, which was becoming disheartening. Behind the tent was a fairly good size igloo, standing at the lips of a cliff, somewhat lost in the vastness of the almost all white, snowy landscape. He had never used his ore once, it was all by some hidden force that the boat found its way to the shoreline; some hidden force of this Eskimo woman he guessed, whose name he’d fine out was Oaassaaluk: yes, the boat was brought to shore by her will.

—Lowell had learned as he met young Oaassaaluk, and her two children, that she was from an Inuit tribe from Greenland, a Thule tribe. When she scented the dead man in the boat, she was a bit fearful, hoping he was not ill-treated during his life, lest he come back to haunt them. She spoke the language of the Inuit’s from Greenland, and thus, performed a ritual that evening for the dead man. She circled him like a wolf, wondering if he was going to come back and haunt them, then like thunder in the middle of the night, as the fire was going down, somewhat flickering out, she ran outside of the tent she had, with a sharp tooth for a knife, a tooth from a huge bear, and stabbed him again and again through the heart, to insure he was dead, and would not come back and haunt her children and her children; Lowell saw it all, as he had stayed by the fire, and the children in the igloo saw nothing.
She was well understood by/or to Lowell, he didn’t’ know why or how, but it seemed she had some supernatural power to make it so—thus they communicated without any difficulties. As he looked at his friends body, she had scalped him, turned his eyes, mouth, ears and genitals inside out, saying, “…it is better my new friend, to kill him once and for all, than to have him follow us at night.” Lowell said not a word. He had thought his wife was dangerous, but Oaassaaluk was far more vicious should she want to be, more than Shauna had ever thought of being.

As the days and weeks passed, they both found themselves sleeping together in the tent as one—as one would feel to a wife or husband, and he learned many things of her, and she of him. They even taught each other their personal songs. As they would also sing them at night wither her children around a bonfire.
She explained, Perlussuaq was their evil spirit, who could wish living creatures ill, and she believed his friend had met the evil spirit, and thus, he was doomed. Had Lowell continued down the river, his fate would had been the same she explained, but the evil spirit was lazy, and did not think she was close by and therefore felt it had time to squander, for the spirit was looking for her but her magic created kind of black bubble around her so he could not smell, or see her: detect her in anyway. But once she had used her powers, thus, she had opened herself up, coming out of her safety zone; in essence, she was open to his wickedness, it was why she had to insure the man was dead.
She had taught Lowell by this time, spoken charms, and to chant them softly. And about the taboos of food, and eating of meat: basically, the age mattered as did the kind of animal, and sex. Should he eat the heart, his vitality would diminish. He’d explain to her of his wife whom would use her skills in black magic to insure he’d do as she wanted. But Oaassaaluk never said a word bad about his wife; she turned out to be a good listener. And as the days and months passed they become not only lovers, but soul mates. In the mornings she’d cook eggs, and have meat, coffee made, where she got those items, he never knew nor asked, but his supplies were almost depleted, and so he was thankful she had a resource, whatever it was. During these times, He would care for the children while she was gone and dogs as need be.
In her beliefs, she knew she had a soul [her breath], she told Lowell; matter of fact, she had three ‘breaths,’ if not more, so she indicated, and life was everlasting and She wore amulets, the skin of the upper jaw of a bear her recent husband was killed by, of which, she endowed with pride and courage. And she had in her tent, and in the igloo, skulls of foxes.


[Interlude III] Lowell, as time went by, found his new mate to be most desirable, and seemingly had all but forgotten Shauna, his wife. He now preferred the warmth of his new mate, of which she was more than willing to provide for him. She, Oaassaaluk had produced in him a swimming sensation of bliss he had never felt before; one that accepted death, before idealism. His face flushed when they met often; at the same time his hair became stimulated to its roots. Her gracious spirit drove him insanely excited.


4
Evil Spirits





The Demon’s Ark

Born from the horns
Of a wingless archangel
With the pulse of
Perpetual night—
Lo, the demonic horizon:
Mortals jagged plight.


It was in January, of the year l910; Lowell had been missing for months without any word to civilization, that he was alive. And suddenly when Oaassaaluk had returned one morning back to the camp, she was ill, very ill. Oaassaaluk’s husband had been an ‘angakkoq,’ shaman, or priest, and she had learned much from him. He was the interpreter of the signs, and he was her precedence, and the evil spirit was mad at Oaassaaluk for saving the white man, taking Lowell away from him; whom would have been his next victim. As he was angry at Oaassaaluk’s husband previously; for they had been escaping, running away from it—the evil spirit, as to not have to give it respect, it wanted, respect in the form of worship, which it pleaded for, and swore it would get revenge should they not give it. In consequence, in fear and faith they had run a thousand miles, and then of course the evil spirit sent the bear to kill the husband, and she had been lonely and would not sleep with the evil spirit and hid from it; out of loneliness, isolation, and knowing the evil spirit was on a rampage, she helped Lowell escape its deadly intent, his unknowing it; hence, he evaded his fate of death; now she had taken him as her mate. She sang ‘ajajas,’ calling on the good spirits to help her. Her illness was unceasing though; she became mute and extremely violent at times, then temperate as a lamb, yet she held onto Lowell as if he was her breath, or part of it. As she lay dying day after day, Lowell had found himself much in love with her; he loved her dearly, so much so, he stayed with her night and day without eating, only preparing food for the children. He had also found out he did not want to return to his home in the lower states to face his bewitched wife whom kept him as a slave; life was less valuable than he had thought, if it was to be without his Oaassaaluk.
It was a deadly night when he sat in the igloo by her side as she was dying, when all of a sudden out of nowhere, people he had never met seemed to come in and out of the igloo, he knew they were ghost’s from the of some peculiar kind, but he said nothing. They were having a feast of some kind, laughter, drums sounded, in the space of a few days; it looked like a village outside the igloo. It had become over populated, fifty people maybe. Despite the influx, the snow did not stop them or the cold, or the size of the igloo, the guests were puckered eyed, and talked in her concise language.

In the summer of 1911, the bodies of Oaassaaluk and Lowell were found, side by side, ugly in the sun, skin rotting as if they were a black puddle of flesh, harnessed to one another like a team of dogs. He had tied himself to her, and ordered the ghosts to tie him tighter, so tight, he’d not be able to get out; for it was said no one could have done it alone. And so as he had wished, they died together, arms and body entangled around one anther. From the edge of the cliff, where the igloo was, the two children were gone.



Nightmare

He lives within the deep
Where others never sleep—
Monstrous fathoms below,
Where Lava Rivers flow,
And crowding waters rush.

He is the nightmare demon
With a flat, untraversable form—
Lying in a bottomless tomb,
Haply awakened from doom
Thirsting diabolical ruin!...

Note: original idea came from a dream; I called “The Prize,” 3/24/05, completed 4/2/05.




9.



The Great Tower at Kura
The Great Tower at Kura
[4th Millennium BC]





At the start of the 4th-millennium BC (350-years before the Great Flood took place, which ended all civilizations on the face of the earth) gave rise to Slaug (a region of land, territory), an empire within civilization (a city-state of sorts); —of which, the human race was subject to an international court, that incorporated a triangle of cultures, empires, societies, and nations across all the connecting continents of the contemporary world of today, yet, of that epoch, they were all connected at this particular time. They—meaning all lands on earth—were the composition, one opus for the entire globe, sustained from one region in the Atlantic, wherein, the strait nearby, which lead into the Mediterranean, would be know as the Pillars of Hercules; yet at that time there was no connecting of the Atlantic to the Mediterranean Sea above land.
There were no external moral laws either, against any behavior during this era of civilizations around the globe. Yes, people were different, and humility was not a virtue; the laws within the heart that told one it was wrong, were dead, like bones left to dry in a corpse; thus, what might be considered unmoral actions was all-relative.
Economies were often—which was the norm—often based on slave labor, or better put—: for its labor and other desirable services, they counted on slate slavery to do the work. There was no discrimination, all were equal in the minds of the slave owners, masters—bitter-sweet you might say—slaves being: brown, white, black, yellow, red skin, the world over, and the government favored no one, and savagely dealt with each and everyone the same, as if to say, human life was a commodity at best; to the earths total, and complete sum, all combined civilizations were part of the circle, and the cycling of human flesh [slave labor] for: manual labor, industry, employment.
As one was reared to think back in these days: death was simply a recycling of that commodity to be found in most every corner of the world; consequently, free labor in a city-state was a right, which it was given by the Great Democracy that had its world command center in the Atlantic, by a mysterious nation, a powerful and ingenious people, a subgroup from a higher order that no one dared to defy; democracy bent on, and within the world that did not subject the Atlantic Power Region [APR], to it.
The Slaug’s had more slaves possibly than any other civilization on earth at this time; that is, this time I am writing about, the time when this story really did take place, according to the dream-vision of a certain person, and now I shall had this story over to him (and his annuals).

Who am I—if you are asking, it is really inconsequential, yet for curiosity sake, I’m the scribe, the dreamer, and I have left these hidden secrets within a mound on an island for another time, for people to find and explore my writings, if you have found these writings, and this story, then you have searched and have what is called ‘Sacred Geometry,’ and so be it; for I have searched high and low in all the lands of the world to bring alive mysteries that have been hidden, and this is one—my name is Shark,
Religious dissenters [nonconformist] were killed, butchered alive in front of citizens; I did say democracy was in this land—did I not—but open was its boarders to debauchery and the Nation of the Atlantic held the secrets of the necromantic-culture, and that is what the people wanted; buried alive in front of whoever wished to watch, and be it a testament to those who wished to defy the democracy—of which inhuman crudity of the era was, or better put, seemed to be, in human crudity, being normal; it is really only this day and age that man has stepped forward to wave the flag of moral rights and responsibilities, yet hidden beyond all the dictators of the world of today, is exactly what was back in those far off days, evil-hidden—black enchantment—this was the rule, the norm.
Again I must say, and one should remember, it was the model, natural for people to act this way, or was it? Hundreds were put into huge burials [dugout-graves] holes in the ground: perhaps four-hundred could be thrown or tossed, cast in like diseased cattle into these grave pits (I have seen this with my own eyes in my vision). The liar was crucified upside down, he was considered a man with his insides out, and had no skeleton, thus, he was de-boned like a fish soon after, and left to rot outside the cities with the hyenas.
When sentiment: attitude, or opinions crept out, and were witnessed as to anything against the laws and ideals of the Atlantic-Governing Region, it was put out by the abolitionist, then and only then. This was the group that bore the Eagle Wings (yes this group was the Hidden Red Guards, the SS Nazis of our day; the CIA, or FBI, or KGB of the day); the Abolitionist of Kura that worked for the Atlanta Group, were all of these subgroups and more. The emblem that went above their chest, or copper armbands, or brass ring, was the same emblem many other nations in future time would acquire. For example, the wings would go onto the Egyptian culture as well as the Persians to follower and the Roman’s would adopt the eagle wings; and yet far off in the future, the Nazi’s. And in the longer version of humanity yet to be born, the eagle wings would be adapted by North America to follow, the United States, for some odd reason this emblem would never rest for 10,000-years; never relax, never to find a inactive place for very long, remaining open to the conquers of the world, or so it seemed; yes, this was also used by this powerful nation to clench world power, this Atlanta Group—saying their government was for the people by the people—hence, democracy was born, but not signifying exactly what people wanted per se (for they were in a way brain washed), and even though it was not considered as great of an achievement as in today’s standards, it was significant nonetheless; and so it was.
The Abolitionist of Kura (within the city’s governing element), who were the enforcers, would chase down the traders—traders that were considered against the people of course, --the people of the Atlantic Group, so they’d say; the only favoritism was to their own kind was The Atlantic Group—which ruled the world bi-proxy, and at bay. In this city, the city really named Kura, but yet was known as, “The City of the Great Tower,” which was on the edge of the Black Sea, during its existence there was no Black Sea per se—at this time, it would come after the Great Flood—yes I repeat, it did not exit yet, it rather was created, created after the great upheaval of the earth. It was a desert now, a plateau kingdom that rested on the deserts edge, indented with terrain that would someday make a great sea; that said, after the continents would be split in-two (un-connecting the land masses) the crust of the earth would twist with birth pains, turning everything upside down during this Great Flood to be, of this era yet to come. But I’m ahead of my dream——Kura, as was this powerful and mighty economic city-state called, gained the name of: “The Great City Tower,” is where I wish to remain.
As I was about to say, in the middle of the city of Kura, in its very center, its nerve center, otherwise known as its ‘navel,’ stood a two-thousand foot tower, two-thousand feet high into the dusty-blue ink like atmosphere. Its circumference huge also was deep rooted, that is to say, planted, and pushed deep into the crust of the earth to secure it for five-thousand years. It was a marvel of might to an on looking world by its visitors and tourist; but the might came from the Atlantic again, like most things of extraordinary feats, for they did the planting, and I shall get to that momentarily.
Like a peg, a fence peg, it was as it was: unfathomable, much entrenched was this mighty tower, this landmark of all landmarks into layers and layers of earth; taller than the pyramids of Egypt, stronger than the stonewalls of Troy, and more durable than Stonehenge; and older than the Sphinx. Who could boast a mightier beacon such as this [?] Not even Gilgamish and his mighty Uruk. Yet this symbol was not of hope or for one to look forward to, on behalf of mankind, rather the opposite, it was an encouragement to be subdued by the Atlantic group.
Within this city-fortress that spread out like the sun’s beams from the implanted tower, where 230,000-city inhabitants lived, of which 25,000 were-slaves who lived and ate and gossiped and tolerated the rules from the heap that ruled from the Atlantic region, that is, employed slaves with no wages other than time to spend until they earned their freedom, as a result, joining the democracy, the democracy that said they had to be in a slave-status, in all respects, this made the city’s populace somewhere around or close to: 255,000 at this point and time. All the people, as if it was a draft, knew they had to serve two years in slavery upon their sixteenth-birthday. And if not, how could an economy grow prosperous—it was beyond their comprehension, it was an unanswerable question, and pleasing to the Atlantic Group to leave it that way, wherein they had installed this reasoning for many years. It was something never brought up, after its implantation into civilization. The only way to get out of it was to buy your way out before you got in. And should you commit any infractions during your servitude, your time could be extended. The government could use your time and services, or you could be auctioned off by the government to the populist for commodities needed (Note: it is not much different in many ways as being a slave to credit cards of the 21st century I do believe; and trying to pay for credit given in advance, thus one sells his body and soul).
In essence, you did as you were told under this democratic-bondage: for the people by the people, so it was said, but what was meant was free labor for economic purposes, instead of an army that would spoil and use up all ones resources by free labor again to the government, therefore it was in a way, better for the populace, and for the commanding army of some two thousand miles away. In addition, there was open, or free sex if the master so desired it from his or her slave, is it with man or woman, or both?


No God



There was, as you may have already come to this conclusion, no god—that’s right—there was no God to speak of in this all-inclusive world order. The term for God, or deity, was never used, not prior to the great flood at least, not by the governing group from the Atlantic, not out-loud in Kura for the most part. If there was a supernatural being, very little was known of him, and where he was? If there was a secret society, it was taken out of the textbook that was found, that I Shark found, in the hollow of the Shark Mound. No one saw him [Him: being God]: and if they prayed to him, so be it, He evidently didn’t listen, and if He did, no one told the neighbors—no one knew what was on his mind, this God that people sometimes said never existed, if anything was on their minds for the salvation of the world it was the Atlantic Group whom wanted to be worshiped for the most part. There were rumors of course, of a God long ago, but then, there are always such things, is that not so: it was how they thought. And so, there was not a God or a devil or for that matter, politicians, not even a military—as I have already mentioned, as one might expect a city-state to have; yet, there were what was called Watcher’s, or Regulator’s whom would bring you in front of an elected judge—that being, the Abolitionist of Kura would do this, but only if the crime was against the Atlantic Group, which was not excusable—for death lingered shortly after ones crime, and that was normally the judgment, no one fed a criminal either, it was not economically worthy to have done such a pathless feat: feed the enemy with your hard earned money, gold and pensions, for what, to have them rob or abuse the law again, it was better to rid society of the mess and work with the productive; if not needed for strenuous labor that is, in gold mines or in other such places. And to be quite frank, very few got this privilege, and if they did work, they worked free the rest of their lives, if somehow allowed them to earn money along the way they could pay back their freedom if the slave owner was willing. This was all of course in agreement with the democracy. If it was against the city-state, the judge could judge it. Or the king of the province, or city-state for that matter: that is, they could hear it, and judge it. If the crime was against the Atlantic Group, s/he died and that was it (there was no favorites).
The ruling authorities lived on a mountain called Mt. Hermon, there were two hundred of them, and some of their offspring, sons and daughters lived on this big island continent in the Atlantic we have been looking at, ruled from this area, mostly by way of their spiritual fathers. They were said to be 2/3’s godlike and one third human, that is, the half-breeds on the island in the Atlantic. The two hundred on Mt. Hermon were castaways, angelic renegades, with superhuman powers, and looked most angelic indeed, again to the inhabitants, godlike. This island, which ruled the world, by proxy, was by, or near what is known today know as the Azores.
By some kind of electrical transmutation that connected the pyramids to the towers on this Island in the Atlantic, communication was transferred from Mt. Hermon to the leaders of the Atlantic Group. In a like manner, it was transferred to the Great Tower, where a high-priest, whom had a long, very long skull, like those from the Atlantic-Island, would receive these messages, and bring the demands to the king, and his Security Counsel, and from there to the people, for the people. The king was elected by the Atlantic-Island, and usually was one of the humans, from—lets say—a city-state, in most cases from the Great Tower area; --yet not always, and the city’s Security Counsel, being of the inhabitants, had the most slaves of them all; there were fifteen members to rule this city-body.



Narn


Narn was but a child when he witnessed the Great Tower being build, and placed within his camp, for at that time it was not a city, rather a military camp, this was of course, before they had done-away with the military. And the Tower would do just that. The Tower was brought forward by these giants of sorts, sons of the supernatural beings on Mt. Hermon, and there they worked and were fed by the surrounding inhabitants. Fed sows and cows and every living beast and thing available until the city government of the Great Tower, of which now was being put into place was built. The giants of the day had at times become so hungry they ate the humans whom could not bring them food quick enough. Some were so huge—they reached as high as six hundred feet; others, on the lower side of the measuring scale, were between: thirteen to seventeen feet tall. All the huge ones would die in the battles that were yet to come (in the near future), their future to be, and prior to the great flood also, just ahead of them; they would battle against one another, killing all but the smaller giants. They, the giants were all evil-spirited.
Whatever the great structure was made of it would not chip, nor was it capable of rusting or becoming salt eaten from the great sea that lay beyond their reach: yet received the winds of salt from them: which would fill their gully, to become one day the Black Sea.
And so this once military site became a city in the makings.


Birth of a City



As time went on, and the city grew, Narn grew old, not necessary weak, or feeble, but like all on earth—like all mortals by and by we grow old with years, but not old by how man would consider him in today’s society, oh no, he was in the winter of his life, but it was only the beginning of winter for him; he was now 175-years old (for some odd reason the genetic structure of humankind ((back then)) did not cascade as it does nowadays). Age was relevant, that is to say, for the times it was common; possible 350-years could be a nice age to die at, or even longer. It would not be for a time yet when this no-God world would have a big-God change, and the rules also, for age would be lowered to one hundred and twenty-years, maximum for life expediency, and that would hinge on good behavior, from the no-God residue.
Narn, had inherited from his father the only, and I say only in the highest regards, the only house that was allowed to be attached onto the Great Tower. None other, no other permanent fixture was ever connected to the Tower, only this one room shack of a house, made of brick and cedarwood. It measured two hundred square feet, small in every respect. His father had built the house more as a tool shed, and was allowed to use it while helping with the design of the Great Tower, and the measuring that was needed during its construction, and planning stages. So respected was he, and he had done such a good job with the Atlantic-Group, and the giants even took favor to him, so respected was he, that the leaders of the two-hundred, of which there were fifteen-such leaders in all, all agreed it should remain as it was, the tiny house, possibly a touch of respect to show the city they had a heart, or possibly they wanted to appease the old man for he was influential. And no one dared violate this, not even after the two-hundred whom were destroyed by the no-God, the God the two-hundred said never existed, as they had proclaimed to the people they ruled over. This God that was no God, had an archangel, Ure’al who came down and buried alive the leaders of the two hundred in the sands of the desert by Mt. Hermon, and for the rest, they were chained under rocks, and within the vaults of the earth. But for some unusual reason, the Atlantic civilization was left alone; although 50% of their power and influence was buried with their forefathers. And this in itself would prove to spark and trigger wars on the Pacific side of the great waters of the world, as well as in the Mediterranean, the Great Sea, along with many city-states, consequently the age of terror and war had started—it had arrived as all living humans knew someday it would. But nonetheless, a city was born.
And as the city grew, neighbors from all around came to see the Great Tower of Kura, and the little house that was attached to the Tower, and as time went on farther down memory’s path, and closer to the time of the Great Flood to be, people came from the all over the known world, from all walks of life, and from the other side of the world to see this global monument—this feat of feats, the cone-heads, or Atlantic-warriors, and priests, with the long skulls, and red hair, came also to worship at the Tower their fathers had left behind. The Long-fingers from the Pacific who had built 90-ton stone monuments of themselves came and moved them by levitation; and the people from the North came: everywhere, everyone came to see this world pilgrimage site.
At the same time the countryside was becoming armed, and more dangerous, and people even tried to take pieces of the house for souvenirs; until the king placed guards watching the visiting groups, individuals, as they came to see this great monument to a bygone era. As this all took root, and trade started to become a zigzagging ordeal, and no one keeping their contracts with one another, frustration grew, it became a world off its rotating axis, it was tilted now, and the Atlantic Group did nothing; no investments were being made, no institutions were being built. No mutilator structure was now in place for peace (where at one time civilization was a circle, there was no beginning or end all was joined together and if there was a seam, no one knew where). A world upside down, without an earthquake, that is how it was developing; it was a time of great squabbles, when generals dethroned kings, and became kings themselves, and the Atlantic authority could do little, but watch. It would seem man was the only creature that could light the world, or darken it, the only creature that could light a fire, was now dissolving to mud. Yet no one dared challenge the supernatural island in the Atlantic, the five members of the Permanent Security Counsel, where were all Atlanteon in nature, these five members were part of the fifteen member group. It had that privilege—of permanency, and that alone it would seem would destroy the world.




The Great Upheaval



And then came the great upheaval, and everyone somehow was looking for the no-God, they never knew, the one they pushed aside, the one they now said: “Yes, I did hear of Him.” The one they were forbidden to talk about, they all knew him now, they must have, they were praying to Him, for death was in the air, the scent of death reeked over the lands like a decaying cloud (from the cedar forests of Lebanon and Syria, to the land of the Nile and the cities of Uruk and Ur, and Troy; and the lands of Attica and Thessaly, Cyprus and Babylon, Susa and over the great rivers of the Euphrates and the Tigris, all of Elam). Some were praying to the Tower, others were raping and killing at will, as if the world was coming to an end, and doing what they always wanted to, but in fear of reprisal, held off. The rain pored, and the animals, the saber-tooth cats, and dogs and all wild creatures started to take over the earth as the waters from the heavens and from the surface poured. And the continents broke, and the North and South Pole’s were put into place, and Greenland was formed, thus
stopping the once warm airs of Europe to settle on the North American side of the world, so came the Arctic, which never existed before; all such things were never before. And as the world started to become torn apart, the Black Sea came into existence, and The Great Tower, the indestructible Tower was buried, buried by the no—God, buried in the sands of time—dragged into nothingness, hidden for all time in the Great Sea, the newly created Black Sea where it remains today—to this very day. Some say ships have seen it, and sank after hitting its top, or sides; not knowing what to make of it; yet, not many, if any have acknowledged it, where it is, not sure why, possibly because it was the ruminants of a global takeover by a supernatural race, a race no one wants to acknowledge existed. And so it remains as it is, out of sight out of mind, and mostly out of mind. Should it resurrect, so will this tale.


Note: A dream of sorts [4/1/2005]




10.



Colored Clouds
Over Beijing


The Meeting

[Winter of 1996] Not unpleasantly, yet with dull glazing eyes, to show an unspoken image, a warning to come—he had given her a sway of attention on The Great Wall of China, earlier-on, during the morning tourist trip that is: with the raw coolness in the air, she ran past him, with her slim-lined running suite on.
“Heavens!” Exclaimed this lean, model formed woman.
“Can’t you go any faster?” she said.
Obviously he couldn’t but she didn’t know why—now she was standing by him in the hotel barroom, watching him drinking a coke at a small table by himself, listening to karaka music. She turned round facing his table somewhat embracing hers; —reaching out to him for a dance as he held onto his coke bottle, his glass next to it, she spoke to him as she moved her chair to his, carefully and with obvious chosen words and direction,
“Well,” she said [a pause, with a smile and a nod to indicate she wanted to dance.
“No!” he commented [almost scornfully].
“Why?” she said.
Said he, with an air of reluctance:
“We’ll, you made fun of me on The Great Wall today, evidently for not moving fast enough, and I’ve just had heart surgery!”
She looked carefully at him, as if she was examining him.
Her short ash-blond hair was combed back; her rose colored checks looked fresh and vibrant, as did her slim fine frame: she was several years younger than he. Her eyes, a dull blue almost faded.
“Something tells me we’re going to like one another; —incidentally, I’m 90% blind, I can catch images from my peripheral vision though. I’m sorry if I didn’t recognize your ailment, I was flirting you know, that’s all.”
She could here the music playing, her body swayed with it as she talked. The breath of the inquisitive female blew warm with panic waves through his body, yet she was becoming comfortable to be with: she seemed to be scornfully hot. And then a voice came from the karaka apparatus about fifteen-feet away, on a small platform. Seemingly the music seemed to kidnap them both as they started to dance the evening away, soon after some bursts of laughter came from their faces.
“You are a charming dancer,” she demurred.
“Charming, haw—that’s a different way of putting it, but fine, my name is Antaean.”
“I know who you are,” she acknowledged, “I asked the tour guide; I’ve been watching you, what I could see of you that is, mostly foggy images.”

٭

Mary Rosé looked at me, it was too ghostly for words, she claimed she didn’t’ like the rest of the group, that being about four-bus-loads of persons, amounting to about 120-individuals, several being of some gang from New York, or so I had heard. She explained she had seen me at a few different stops, harmless, I guess she was right. How modest I thought for a blind beauty, she must have been about thirty-four, or so I guessed. For myself, I was a fickle indifferent male I suppose, to classify myself. Actually so many women hurt me; they scared the hell out of me. In any case, she was growing on me, and at forty-two, single, with a little business, she also looked safe.
“You’re nervous?” she said, with a gloating smile.
“No, I don’t think I was, but I suppose am I?” I said, knowing I was a bit uneasy.
I disagreed with her basically on principle, not facts; I think she was more right than wrong. Suddenly I stopped dancing, remotely conscious of this, looking for some kind of an expression on her, but couldn’t find one. Seizing the opportunity, I grabbed a nearby chair; I quickly sat down, put both my hands on the table, and commenced to drink my coke, after trying to catch my breath.
Inquiringly, she looked at me; she explained I was welcome to go to her room. Not sure why, but I sat deeply in thought, my mind had gone back to the long stay in the hospital, the divorce I went through; my ex-wife leaving me for another man who wasn’t as ill as I was. Yet this lovely lady was interesting.
“To your room,” I burped out automatically.
“It’s was just a suggestion, not a demand, if you’d like to dance, that is fine with me also.” We didn’t dance, but we both went up to the microphone, and sang a few songs together, I guess that made me more comfortable with her. Then shortly after that, we sat down, and I somehow convinced myself and Mary Rosé the music had gotten worse, she smiled, agreeing. And there I was a moment later in bed with this lovely creature, with golden bronze skin, here in Beijing, on a cold winter’s eve, naked as a jaybird. It was a warm and wondrous night; and we got to know each other as friends and intimately, and then fell to sleep.
Her thin thighs rose up with the sun, as she headed for the shower, and I for my cloths, and quietly disappeared.

As I walked about Beijing her voice came to me a number of times: hauntingly, and then it faded, somewhat magical it seemed. She was more than a good distraction, and I was lonely, not feeling alone per se, just a bit lonely, or so I felt (yet prior to her appearance this never occurred to me ((now there was emptiness for the moment anyway)).
Her eyes seemed to have been photographic, they never moved much, just studied my face as I studied hers, then after a moment she knew better than I, my contours that is, and these were my thoughts going like cockroaches racing across my mind.
—I sat down at a small sea-food café, Mary Rosé continued to swim in my thoughts, feelings in my stomach, and lower: my judgment was: yes she was now part of my judgment (verdict, sentence), of if my day would be good, or great: should I find her and share it, or leave it alone; statement-questions filled my brain waves. Her slender shoulders appeared in my brain: a young Chinese girl came over by me with a glass of water, she set it down, gave me a menu in Chinese, my eyes opened up wide as if to say: ‘what,’ I couldn’t read it. I pointed over to what the lady in front of me was eating, and said: ‘me,’ she understood, and went back to prepare it, then started laughing with her sister—uncontrollable, and I joined the laughter, not sure why but it felt good; I was the only American, or white person in this small restaurant.
The sun had come out, and it was forenoon, and the streets were filled with the masses of Beijing people. As I waited for my food I thought about the man with no arms and legs lying on a rug on the sidewalk on my way to this café, begging for money. There seemed to be more life in this city than most I had ever been to. No dark sea of hatred, although women across from me by the window kept staring without a smile at me, perhaps she was a left over from the Mai years, I presupposed. Nonetheless, I liked the coolness of the air, the colored clouds in the sky overhead, with their shades of white and pale blues and tints of inky black laced within them; here and there, yellowish rays with red showed the powerful sun at work in the chilled city, as it shoved its way through everything: clouds, sky right down to me.
Here comes my food, looks good, bits and pieces of cooked fish, with a light patter on the skin, some rice, and some other things I dare not try to guess what they are.


The Terror

He watched the television set as he sat eating the bits and pieces of fish and rice laid on top of one another—carefully watching a story unfold, keeping his panic inside his stomach as though the programming of the news event would change to be a fictional story; he picked up his tea, keeping his eyes on the TV event, following every word, knowing he could not understand it, but could figure it out later, something was familiar, an instinct, premonition, intuition, something.
He hadn’t even blinked for the longest while watching the news, then he did, rubbing his eyes, a tear came, the two laughing girls were not laughing anymore. ((The older woman across from him remained indifferent)).
He said to himself: ‘I saw those walls before.’
As he looked to the right within the corner of the television screen he noticed Mary Rosé’s thin blue windbreaker [coat], or so it looked like hers, dangling on a wooden coat rack, the same one he saw at her apartment. Why was she in the news he pondered.
Coincidences, one too many he thought. Finally he stood up to get a better look at the screen, he walked slower to it, almost shoulder to shoulder with it: the language coming from the news program still Chinese but the body language was international: the faces, the hands, the slow walking, and he could understand it only too well. An American at a hotel, his hotel, that was all she was to the newscast; then out of curiosity, the others in the small damp café stood up to get a better look, some in back, a few in front of him. The woman with the unfriendly smile had a smirk on her face as if to say: yaw, them noisy mischievous Americans again, nothing but trouble (and she’d be partly right). But it was worse than that.
Now flanked by bodies, Antaean shifted his shoulder to a forty-five-degrees angle, to get a better point of view, and made his way back to the table and sat back looking at his watch. Then all of a sudden a picture appeared—it was just becoming visible as the camera person moved about—that is, in relation to a body on the floor by a bed, her bed. He look closer, wanting to believe it was not her, then the person moved the camera a little to the west side of the room, the side her bed was on, the side the wall of the bed was against, and across to the south, was the window. “It’s her apartment,” he said out loud, he had said it a hundred times inside his mind.
Almost in shock, he was to discover Mary Rosé—unsettling, all shadows disappeared, surrounding her dead body, naked dead body—white, pure white teeth, and eyes, Antaean was like he was dead himself: emptiness scratched his now shell of a body, num body. Outside the window where the birds used to sing, there was no chirping, no sounds for the moment, perhaps he thought, they could read his mind, or better yet, they and instincts that warned them of moods, and grief, this was one of them.
Although activity was going on in the cameraman’s film, it seemed that his brain was silent, his fact was flat, without emotion; his heart started swirling as if it was a galaxy in motion—you could tell, a tear in the corner of his eye, as another camera caught a glimpse of him trying to gain his composure. The full frame of the picture was now filled with her body. The cameraman shifted the camera to and fro to show heaps of evidence the culprits left behind. Beer bottles, cigarettes, everything imaginable that a party would have.
Spellbind, he wiped his eyes dry, dry uneasily with a napkin. She evidently had invited one of the several young men on the tour-bus [s] to her apartment, and throughout the night, the ordeal took place, several of gang members slowly raped her.
She really hadn’t seen any of this coming, he had learned, they were just drunk, and took advantage of the blind girls passion for company. Then out of nowhere one of the guys got high, too high and broke a table with glasses and a whisky bottle on it, and the glass had shifted all over the bed and table, and floor. After forcing her to make love again, her wounds became many, and in fear the boys ran back to their rooms, as if they would not be identified, all six or seven of them, all between sixteen and nineteen years old.
For a moment the images of the television left his mind, he couldn’t return to that room again, to return, and gain back the gravity of his whole being; he’d have to avoid that whole floor.

Written 2003, revised 1/9/2006






11.



The Cephalopoda:
Queen of the Arctic




Advance: before we get into this short story, it might be of interest to the reader, I know it was for me, that the Polar Ice Cap, at the North Pole has not been explored for the most part, due to the Cold War, which of course ended more than a decade ago, nonetheless, it remains, by and large, uncultivated. Now having said that let me say: biodiversity of species were always known to decline in numbers when going into colder areas, which to the scientist seemed reasonable. But again, I need to say, humanoids have not researched this area a great deal, in fear of conflict with other nations, thus comes into view this story.

I was in the Arctic in l996, Barrow, Alaska when the hotel, front desk clerk, told me fragments of a story — her husband would tell me the rest. Her husband was a pilot for an oil company up there, and they actually brought me back some sea shells one afternoon, having told Jackie the night before: I wondered how they’d look, meaning, were they the same in the Arctic as in the lower parts of the world, or the lower forty-eight, as they say up in Alaska. It was amazing to see the diversity of these shells. But let me not stray off the premise too much of this short and peculiar story — yet diversity is a key word.

The Story

As I was about to say, I was introduced to a creature beyond my imagination, I call it [for lack of a better name other than squid or octopus], “The Arctic Cephalopoda Queen.”
Jackie, being a Oceanographer — when not a clerk at the hotel, and her husband being a Zoologist [Henry] — in his spare time, also a pilot, and myself being a Licensed Counselor, and part time Tourist Archeologist, I became quite interested in what they had to say and show. But before I go too far, let me add: they had been working on an archeological site, some three-hundred miles from Barrow, finding skulls, and bones of the tribal people of that area for sometime. I got to look at the pictures of some of these artifacts by one of the diggers, but they would not let me go to the site in fear I might open it up to other tourists. That was a while ago: and the newspapers confirmed they did find the site, and so this story they told me, gave mine more credence, which I’m going to tell you.
As far fetched as this may sound, I will try with heart and soul to tell it as it came to me: one night while sitting at the Top of the World Hotel.
Incidentally, the North Slope paper, published one of my articles, of which the find of the skull and bones were in; they did put them all back—, back in place where they found them, buried them as they had been found, and laid for thousands of years.
So here is how they explained the happening, or origin of the creature to me, and its description. Now I do not know that much about astrology, or the planet system, I only know what I’ve saw through my telescopes and read in my books, and yes, I’ve done a little hands on research, but not much: said Henry to me, with a cautious voice, as if he should or shouldn’t show me the picture, and then tell me the story, yet he did pull out the picture, and started with the story (putting the picture back in his pocket, for same keeping, I’m sure:
“It came from Saturn’s outermost moon, that being Phoebe, when it collided, prior to its being captured by Saturn’s pull — eons ago. In the process, before Phoebe entered Saturn’s orbit, fragments with no gravity, broke off within the solar system, Phoebe being at the far end of the system, some of these fragments landed on earth. Henceforward, particles of this matter ended up in the frozen waters of the Arctic, the Ice Cap. During this catastrophe, it has been said [so he explains to me], still other parts that originally landed on the largest moon of Saturn [Titan, which harbors an atmosphere], first gave life to these organisms that were cast off the racing meteorite that formed out of Phoebe.”
Again, I want to repeat myself [he said: he being Henry talking to me]: Titan gave, triggered something in these organisms to give it real active life; and when these other elements were cast off Titan they ended on Earth, allowing the new formed creatures to grow in this arctic isolated habitat, that has just been discovered recently: after millions of years. It kind of sounded like, “The Creature from the Black Lagoon.”

Now this all made quite an interesting story to me, but I thought it simply easier to say,
“Maybe you discovered a new species that has always been here on earth, in the deep waters of the Arctic, why not, it makes life easier (at least for me).”
But he insisted it happened in some mysterious way as I have just told you — take or give a few misunderstandings I’m sure: nonetheless, it all came about in a similar manner. Now let me describe it to you as I saw the picture.


Description:

it seemed to have a height of about two feet, tentacles (making it between seven to ten inches taller); I call it, its hair, in lack of a better portrayal. Anyhow, its hair like tentacles was attached to the top of its head, you couldn’t see it clearly, but if you looked closer to the picture they had fallen backwards to rest on the creatures back, and thus, you could see them slightly in the dark shadows by its skinny neck.
It had two huge dark irises,—the eyes filled up thirty-five percent of its frontal-face, of which it had a very small mouth
(or perchance, none at all, for what I thought was a mouth could very well be a wrinkle in the skin); it also had a small forehead that leaped kinda into a sloping back: baldness all the way; but it had a long string like nose, with a tip to it. The torso was like a fat, half hot-dog, inside this hot-dog like shell were wobbly cell like membranes, large cells for the most part, they looked as if they had drifted into one another; as its bottom section shaped into a cone type feature; between these two sections, was a tunic like apron — possible better put, like a see-through blouse, or jellyfish, it was equal to a short dress.
The Zoologist said they lived in the deepest and coldest waters of the Arctic, under the Ice Cap. They were armless, and looked harmless. And again I have paraphrased my forgotten friend, for I have not kept pace with his whereabouts, or his wife’s, other than one letter after I left Barrow, Alaska, telling her of my article in the Arctic paper, which I guess they had already seen; for I got a postcard the following Christmas, and I never did send one back.

Reproduction:

but let me go on: I was told they did not have to have a male to reproduce, that they gave birth the female species reproduce on their own, until it reached the age of twenty or more years. And so at this juncture, I asked the question, just (like a man would I suppose):
“What good did the man for this species (if any),” thinking everyone has to have a function. He said the male creature did have a function, not for reproduction, although before the female had children, the male did do some kind of ritual, I call it dancing from side to side (as he tried to explain, perhaps to calm the reproduction process down in the female, or for some emotional comfort); and then he added: they normally would stare in each other’s faces, not even touching; thus, stimulating, but not to the point of the male having an erection or ejaculating, or even if he did, it was not used for reproduction; what a squander I thought [with all respect intended I say that].
And so at this point, I was really curious on knowing more about this creature, and asked to go on his next venture: he had said he would take me, but it would cost, just to tag along, and no pictures, for he wanted to keep the only ones, perhaps sell them to National Geographic some day, was my best guest; the greedy hog (I should take back incase he is reading this). The cost back then was $10,000, which is about $20,000 I suppose in today’s money value: and that only paid for seeing one close up, he’d find one, bring it to me, and allow it to be returned to its habitat.

Wishful Thinking

I had just gotten into real-estate, and had some extra money, and thus, I wanted to pay the money, but I knew I couldn’t afford it, not really; it was a once in a like time thing.
Again he said,
“I got sick one day, very, very sick — you see Dennis [he says to me], the male is sharply lowered (in evolution I expect he meant) to protect the female, and its potential predators: for the female has no way of combating an enemy (this was a joke to me, I mean, if she could only have sex, she’d not need any combat bodyguard to protect her, how silly I thought: but I didn’t’ say that, lest he shove me in a hole in the ice when I wasn’t looking).
So what happens is this — and I witnessed it come about (he continues to explain to me), when an adversary approaches, and the male notices him getting within an uncomfortable zone for him and his mate, it releases a toxic chemical (which only the male can discharge): it was in this case as powerful as hemlock you might say, if not stronger: a strong poison; so strong I was sick for a week, and I was far beyond what I would call their comfort zone, but the ugly looking predator died within minutes, its body no longer could withstand the environment. Thus, the secret is in finding the female alone.”
Incidentally, he said the water around that area where the two creatures lived, was polluted for several hours. Nothing, not a thing could go in that area without suffering biological or genetic damage. My guess was these were undisturbed waters for eons, and therefore, the chemicals and its residue, just resided in and around that domain.

And so this was my story, I cannot prove it, nor shall I try, but as people go searching within these waters they will find out these new species that disturb our imagination, are attractively real, for the most part.


The Arctic Cephalopoda Queen
[Part Two]

The Sitting

I wasn’t really going to tell this part of the story, its been a long time since it took place, and I told my friends it would remain closed, but sense they have open up that area for exploration recently, they will discover the Cephalopoda Queen sooner or later, so you might just as well hear it form me. In my last part, of the story, about the Arctic Cephalopoda Queen, I didn’t explain everything as I should have: yes, I know, I kind of mislead you, the reader so you couldn’t put the whole story together. Not an outright lie, but just what I’d call a distortion: no, not a distortion, a deletion, that sounds better.
Having said that, I will try to put together a little more of this (that is, fill in that hole, put back that deletion I took out, if I can) — not sure what to call it, finding, a discovery: actually they may have found what I’m talking about anyway and named it something else, and I think I got something new, when in essence, it is just old news.

Let me try to explain: on the surface of the ice in the Arctic, you have pools of water, or kind of shallow ponds: water on ice. If you go out in certain areas, you will have openings, and whales will be sailing around like little boats, and the Inuit’s, will use their small boats, and long spears, usually three in a boat, and go whale hunting this way.
Thus, they are allowed a certain amount of whales they can kill: allowed I say, by the United States Government, annually. When I was up there, the Captain [of whom I called prior to my arrival] said he’d take me out on a whale hunt, but I couldn’t kill a whale, only watch. Jackie’s boyfriend, he was not really her husband, that is where some of the distortion comes in, was on hand also during this time, flew out on the ice, and so I got there before the group of hunters, and was quite excited. He had showed me the picture the night before, the picture of the Cephalopoda Queen. I really did want to go hunting with the Inuit’s, this is very true, and they were carting their boats out onto the ice and out to the holes within the ice by way of—believe this or not—by snowmobile, and when they don’t run anymore, they leave them on the ice to sink in mid-June.
Well, we got to the opening, and it was what I’d consider quite big, three whales were in this area, possible as big as a small lake, I’d say, one mile or so circumference. Henry was going to see if he could spot one of these creatures and he told me about, and the Captain had originally had told him about this, during a drunken spell. Let me clarify this, somewhat: in l996, this area of Alaska was dry, no alcohol was allowed, and actually they wanted me to work there some several months later, and had called me to do so — the reason being, I wanted to remain there after I saw what I saw, and put in an application to work as a General Manager for their outpatient and inpatient Chemically Dependent clinic. I never did because I went to work for Hawthorn Institute, as General Manager. But the job was offered me, to my recollection.
But let’s get back to the other issue, Henry. Now he had been out to the pole several times he had said, but for only short periods of time. And that the picture he had was from that area, but he had seen — not captured, but seen the queen at times out in this area where we were, the reason being, the waters were disturbed not only by the whales, but would soon be by the hunters, and he said, if we could get there before the hunters, our likelihood of seeing one, increased; so I took my binoculars just in case.
Now I had not drawn the picture of the creature yet, I had an idea of it from the camera shot he had shown me, but it wasn’t clear and I had to do some guessing on how its bottom section looked.
So when we landed we left the plane running, allowing the humming of the motor to continue to not alarm the creature or the whales, the humming seemed to also drawn out our voices, which was good. We were about a hundred miles west of Barrow on the ice now, we spotted some polar bears, but I had seen them before, when they get running they run like gofers, faster than cockroach, I doubt any man could out run them.
Usually they blend in so well with the snow, but I was looking for the creature, and spotted one, I think he got the scent of something, and so I followed his maneuvering. And yup, he was running to the opening in the ice, I thought possibly it was a seal or something of that nature at first, surely not a whale.
The bear got nearer the edge of the ice, fearful it would break off he laid down — and covered himself up a bit with snow, there were like frozen waves of ice all about, and he broke some of them off to hide his smell, I think that is what he was doing; we walked around to his side a little more, but we didn’t want to disturb the moment, we wanted to see what he discovered. And sure enough, something poked its head out of the water. I was frantic, and wanted to run to see, but Henry calmed me down, grabbed my forearm. He was also carrying a rifle just in case of an emergency. The bear stayed hidden, then like a hawk grabbing a prior dog, the bear snatched its, by putting its hand in the ice and pulling the creature towards him, that is when I started to run towards the creature, and that is when Henry shot in the air, and everything went from quiet to chaos. The bear dropped the creature, the whales dived deep into the water, the bear ran, and there I was standing by the Cephalopoda Queen. I didn’t touch her, just stood over her, and she was as if dead, but wasn’t dead. That is when I got the full shot of the creature; more than a glimpse, but a close up view.
What do you do in a situation like that I told myself, it was harmless, and looked so innocent, and I had in my mist something unbelievable. It was about four feet from the edge of the water. I’m not sure if I seen a smile on it or not, as I said before, I drew the picture as I seen it (this was the time I’d refer to later on as the great moment, when I told everyone I saw the creature ((drew the picture of the creator thereafter)), but that was to be sometime in the future yet, now I just had the creature in my eye sight, stone-still, during the following seconds my heart beat crazy).
I had for years; lost it, the picture I drew, and drew another one from memory. In any case, I picked it up (thank god it was a female, not the males according to Henry, it could emit some toxic chemical and had killed me, but I couldn’t tell one from the other anyhow, and I placed it in the water. It fell over to its side; I think it was in a daze. It laid dormant for a few minutes, I was about to pull it back out of the water, thinking it was dead, and what the heck, I now could morally take it: but it woke up, kind of moved about getting it balance, and I saw its tentacles moving and its apron type fins and it leaned forward, and sank into the cold waters.


The Arctic Cephalopoda Queen
[Part Three]

The Kraken-Bishop Fish

It has been said everything on land has its ocean [sea] counter part i.e., star-fish, and sun-fish; also cat-fish, and dog-fish; how about sea lions, and sea elephants, and sea horses, and sea cows, etcetera. I think I have made my point, although you do not know my point yet. We have mermaids and mermen, or hippocampus’, and we have “Bishops;” now we’re getting closer to my point.
This sea creature, the Bishops, have been known to wear a miter on its head, and vestments on its shoulders, body covered with scales. I seen a drawing of one, it looked similar to the creature I had seen the one I called the Arctic Cephalopoda Queen, except for a few missing details. But let me go on with this, a little deeper: one of these creatures was caught in the 16th century, and given to the King of Poland as a gift, but in some gesture way, it pleaded to the clergy, and he allowed it to be freed back into the sea, a mammal I presume. On the other hand I have read that this sea creature that has been mistaken for a walrus. My point, I will stick with the first description, it fits my agenda.
The Bishop fish is a descendant of the mermen of ancient Mesopotamia; and point of fact is, all these myths we call myths are finding its way to the surface, out around the world, and its surface is a bone of contention, dealing with reality, the issue of myth vs. reality; and there is more to it than myth. If I’d add on to this Bishop fish a few things, one being the Kraken tentacles on its head, not all that long though, it very well could resemble the creature I saw.

Notes: Part one to this story was completed on June 29, 2002, and the other two parts on, July 1, 2002; reedited and slightly revised, 1/9/2006. It was inspired by the drawing of Clark A. Smith’s, ‘Nightmare,’ presently owned by the author, and shown on the site ‘The Eldritch Dark.’





12.











13.





15.





19.



Lost Canyon



Un-orderliness

Upon the third day of October, 1903, he set out with two friends, Fitzgerald, and Patton and himself, Deppit, to look over the Canyon, for an entrance that they could climb through. With Pacific air, and a low sun the three men climbed down the canyon walls. Once in the crayon they found themselves in a dense jungle; thus, 5000-feet deep, and ten miles wide.
As they looked about, they lost all sense of direction. Creatures of all kinds moved about the foliage: moved the branches two and from, breaking a few, and the brush, the brushes all seemed to make frightful noises; unseen creatures, echoed out of the thick jungle green.
The summer heat was upon them, but the green roof, canopy over them, allowed for enough blockages to where they would not roast to death, only sweat.
As they journeyed deeper into the thickness of the jungle canyon, with a river running straight through it, it seemed to be of an un-orderly nature. Callous it was it took all the energy out of them.
“This reminds me of the Amazon,” roared Fitzgerald, who was a one time soldier in the United States Army, an officer. He had volunteered to come on this expedition, his father owning a real-estate business in the Midwest, and his parents providing funds for the expedition. He was medium built, about twenty-five years old, a blond haired, blue eyed Irishman; a scholar you might say, since he had no trade, but a lot of education.
Patten had a hideous low laugh, the elder of the group, and second in command to Deppit; a professor from the University of Minnesota in Ecology; Deppit was the leader, in his late 30s, and for the most part, a world explorer of mysteries, and Anthropologist.
“Follow me,” said Deppit, pushing his way through he thick of the jungle, whereupon he stopped suddenly, witnessed the movement in the undergrowth in front of him: it appeared, a giant tarantula. The size of the tarantula’s head was the size of a man’s head. The creature crawled out from under the roots of a giant tree. Fitzgerald’s eyes were as big as watermelons or pretty close to small watermelons anyway. Young Fitzgerald had a hard time swallowing, his mouth went dry,
“Kill the thing,” he whispered to Deppit. He started to look around to escape. Then Deppit, picked up a long branch, and weaved it between the legs of the creature, as if to tranquillize it, and it moved back under its extended roots cautiously: to its cellar home. Now looking at Fitzgerald, he said in a rough voice,
“Get yourself together…!”
Patten had his hand on his rifle; he lowered it, if anything he was ready, overly ready. Deppit didn’t say a word to him, figuring I suppose it was ok to be ready, just not to overreact.
As they walked past the tree with the large hole in the side of it (the creature’s entrance), the eyes of the tarantula were looking up at Fitzgerald, as if it felt he was his enemy. Fitzgerald saw his eyes glaring at him, and kicked dirt into the hole, onto the glaring eyes.
It all happened like a flash of lightening, the creature sprang out of its hole, onto Fitzgerald, Patten pulled his rifle to his shoulder, and aimed it, but the creature was on top of Fitzgerald, inches away from his face…
(This island was a mysterious one: one that was mostly underwater for a thousand years, and had risen within the previous forty years or so, and up to this time, never was explored. The expedition was the first of its kind, the first to the island that is, it was discovered forty years ago, but so far off the trading route, no one bothered to explore it, no one that is until now. And now Fitzgerald was inches away from death.)
this giant creature had some formal reasoning; some intelligence. The creature plunged its fangs into the neck of Fitzgerald, and Patten then shot it, almost blew its head off.


Sunlight


Within a few hours the occurrences of the creature were forgotten news, and Patten and Deppit, pushed their way along the stream in the canyon. They had buried Fitzgerald in the soil along side the tree the creature had lived in. Ah, cold it may seem, but it was the deal they had all made, prior to the trip: should one die along the way, if there is time to bury them so be it, if not, the mission was to write down all they saw, and move down and along the canyon walls, in this case, along he edge of the riverbank, that was—. Somehow they knew it had to end up at the other end of the extremely long and winding canyon.
The jungle was thick, although sunlight had creped in, and when the two men got a chance they grabbed a moment of the sun to regain some energy. The water of the river was cool and pure; it seemed to be likened to a healthy herb for their bodies, in that it refreshed the glow to them.
Large ants, as big a large mans thumb moved diligently to and fro, hundreds of them. Their was no name for this canyon so he called it “Lost Canyon,” simply put for this grotesque island in the middle of the pacific, somewhere beyond Easter Island.
—On the third day, they had discovered, that is to say, encountered three types of common creatures.


The Creature


The creature passed by with no hinder-some pattern and what went through the mind of Patten was to shoot it, but paused to examine it, he was confused, and the creature at the moment showed no aggressive behavior.
After the think had passed, both took a deep breath, hence, releasing hat they were holding inside of their lungs.
“Get me out of here,” cried Patten, the place was starting to get to him.
“No,” said Deppit, “…it’s too late; we got to search and if we can survey this whole canyon for future posterity,” this whole canyon that crossed this small island, no mans island, the island without a name, a canyon that was from the predawn age.
“What was it?” asked Patten.
“A creature with long ears, so long it looked like he could have used them for a mattress to sleep on, or perhaps to fly with. That’s what I saw; an eerie thing wasn’t?” Patten didn’t respond.
Patten thought about the creature for a moment, saying: “Perhaps it is the legendary creature spotted off the west coast of the United States in 1642, some long eared freak.


Life Forms


“Can this creature fly?” asked Deppit.
“No,” Patten commented, adding”…not to my knowledge; although I do believe it was, or is human perhaps or at least partly. Conceivably this thing had a bit of animal and ghost in him—or perhaps, demon, who knows, he is as strange a form of life, as strange as anything else we’ve seen thus far in this lost canyon, on this lost and hidden island. I kind of wish Fitzgerald was still around; he made things a bit more worthwhile.
“No,” said, Deppit, “it wasn’t any kind of animal; it had a human face on it. It looked at me as if …it just creeps on by me: a deplorable looking creature with dark eyes, and long fingernails: naked as a jaybird. It had sunken in looking cheeks, yellow teeth, big lips, and white skin,” he added.
“What does it want?” asked Patten (a rhetorical question for he looked about, not looking for an answer from Deppit).
“Let’s get moving,” said Patten—a bit taken out of his wits.
“No,” said Deppit, “lets park here for the night, the monster knows where we are, and we know he’s around, maybe that’s good, we all need a rest, even him.”


Forward Aground


In the morning the two men simply picked up their stuff and went for forward, down the canyon, following the stream, that is river stream, but it was narrowing as they walked, and then at times it picked up, when other tributaries pushed water into the river from cliffs above, or waters below, that had outlets to the sea. At this point, it seemed the fresh water was mixing with the salt water, or water from the sea, thus, perchance, they deemed they were close to the ocean. For the following three days they both marched down river, or east bound.
There was no indication there was an end to the canyon, only educated guesses, deductions, and hope. And Deppit knew the island was but one hundred miles long, so it had to end some place ahead; unless they ended up going in circles somehow, but this was too far fetched to deliberate on, so they both thought. Deppit was determined to continue farther east, here they came upon more water, more animals, larger insects, huge and appalling as they were, the professor was never without a spark of lie when he cast eyes on a new species for here were creatures, forms of life never once had a human come across before.
—on the 8th night, the shadows of the creature showed up.


Eighth Night


An eerie night it was—shadows crept past the misty moon, the fire prickled a gloomy high pitch, as if someone was playing in it, and pushed out a little substance here and there, or perhaps it was everyone’s imagination. The long eared creature was in the shadow of the moon, which was similar to—at twilight—crossing a lake: it extended somehow across the camp: from the edge of the rim by the woods, where the creature was making his shadow and sounds, then across the camp, and right to the river: then across that also; a beam of light that hooked onto the moon somehow; yes, across their complete camp. You could hear those long ears flapping.
After a few hours passed all was peaceful, perhaps the creature went to sleep, thought Patten. Patten really wanted to shoot the shadow, but as Deppit had said: they were really the invaders, and the creature was just as curious as they, and had more right to be there than they. Thus, why misuse the little ammunition they had on something that had not really threatened them yet, only pass them by, and throw a little scare in them. And as far as Fitzgerald went, who was the killer? It could not be proven beyond a doubt it was a creature like this one, it sure didn’t look the same from the quick view they both had; this creature in any case, had more humanness to it.
Ah! It was indeed a long, long night.

—The following night, things seemed to repeat themselves, kind of. The two men sat back by the fire to relax, smoking some tobacco, had an insignificant evening meal, a shot of whiskey: everything comforting, for the most part…Patten started singing, hoping the professor would follow, but he didn’t, he was too piratical.
The fire seemed to be more smoke than fire, but there seemed to be enough heat for both; they made their beds next to the fire, and hoped the carnivorous night would pass quickly.
It was Patten’s night for first shift on guard duty, four hours on, four off; just in case the long eared creature decided to pay them a visit.


Demise



In the morning of the 10th day, Deppit went to wake up Patten, he was laying down soaking in his own blood, it seemed a heavy sharp instrument had cut halfway through his neck, chopped his head all most completely off: knocked him out first it seemed. He was dead: what killed him and then run off, murmured Deppit, run off back into the woods; of course there was no one around to deliberate that with. Deppit, tried to reason with himself, that it could had been a number of other dangerous animals, not long ears, the human, but his second self told him it was, it was long ears, like Patten had said, it was him who killed Fitzgerald, and who else could it be, no one else followed them. This was a trying situation at best, he had discovered a missing link of some kind, something that had gotten through the evolutionary gap, or was it simply, a freak of nature in genetics. His fear was escalating, but his inquisitiveness was beyond his fear. He picked up his belongings and started going into the forest looking for this creature, forgetting to bury his friend, and to stick close to the river to find his way out of this lost canyon.
A few minutes later he found himself lost in the woods, and a bear was running at him, he did forgot his rifle at the river, thus, he dropped everything and raced backwards, back in the assuming direction he came, hoping to find the river again, and he did, he had just grabbed his rifle in the nick of time, and the bear had grabbed him in the nick of time, and they fought over the rifle, and the rifle went sailing into the air: and the bear picked him up, picked him up high, and twisted him around like a chicken trying to get loose; when the bear had dropped him, dropped him back onto the ground, his arm was completed torn off his shoulder, and the bear was having dinner.
Then something peculiar happened, he saw long ears waving at him with the other hand pointing down river, as if trying to tell him something, he was standing along side of the river (Deppit thing: why does he not come to help me)— pointing down river with the other hand, what was he pointing at, thought Deppit. With one hand, Deppit moved himself over to the river, closer to the river, the bear watching him with the long part of the corner of his eye, one eye, as he devoured his hand, and then Deppit saw it, it was the end of the river, perhaps the end of the canyon, and perchance, the ocean was sitting right beyond its edge; it had taken its last swallow, and now it was coming back for more!...

Note: written after returning from Colombia to Peru, South America, and than back to Minnesota, November, 2005 (inspired at the museum in Bogotá, after seeing a creature from the 18th century, with ears down to his ankles, whom was spotted in the California area. Written 12/11/2005



20.

Along the Docks of Havana

1
Havana and Carlos
It seems Havana has what I call a luring spell upon people; it surely does have a lively spirit. The architecture remains at the pre-Cuban Revolution form. The Tropicana, where I stayed, an 1951 nightclub has its ‘if,’ like flies, but then so does all of Havana, or what they call Old Havana, along with its pock-marked buildings from the salt and wind coming in from the sea. One thing that stands out among many, is its glorious seafront, built by the Miami mobsters, I have heard; and rebuild I would imagine for the tourist of the new contemporary generation and scene; here I spent a lot of my time, and where the story I’m about to tell you takes place. But we must not forget the old cars, they are everywhere, and the Cuban owners are quite proud of them: that is, their vintage Chevy’s, Buick’s, etc., they are all here.
As I was about to say, my wife and I went to Havana, and became fumilure with most of its seafront, and fabulous ‘50s houses, and aging Spanish architecture; the Plaza de Armas, and all the paintings and pictures of ‘Che,’ as if he was the one and only hero in Cuba. Also, I should mention in passing, there are the remnants of Havana’s sin city, being renovated.
--As we combed the seafront daily and nightly, the dock area that is, with its mounted canons, and heavy cemented walkways, we noticed three young boys, Carlos being the oldest of them, possible he was thirteen years old. It was a hot summer’s day, in 2002. Carlos was slim, but muscular, a nice looking lad, we had talked to him a few times previously to this gathering, threw in a few dimes in the water for him today and his friends to dived in for them along with him; over the railing they jumped and brought them back up; thus, becoming the owners of them. He was quite good at it, with puffed out biceps, and long solid triceps. He could stay under water almost three minutes should someone time him, looking for the hand-full of change a person may have thrown in, and I saw this happen more than once. Possible twenty-five coins he’d gather up bring them to the surface at times, but mostly three or four was the norm; I myself threw in at least seven or eight coins at a time. His two young friends, possible ten and eleven, gathered up one or two of the coins each time, and him the rest; I would guess about ten feet from the dock was where he was diving, and possible fifteen to seventeen feet deep was the water, or so he claimed it was.
I myself was a good swimmer at the YMCA growing up in the late 50s and 60s and possible could stay underwater for one and a half minutes, but never could I reach two. Along with his good lungs, Carlos could dive quite well, from the dock, which was possible fifteen feet up, and had a good smooth figure to pierce the water with. He arched his hands liken to a diamond, protecting his head just before he touched the water, superbly executed dives. I have missed a few dives, and ended up with a belly flop, red and sore for a week thereafter, and one time I almost busted the bridge of my nose, so it can be dangerous, should you twist or mess up on the dive.
He had a nice Spanish bronze-ness to his youthful skin, dark hair, and dazzling black peal eyes. Full of life he was. He brought me back to my youth, where I had to take out old memories kept in mothballs to recall those far off days swimming in the Minnesota lakes.
2
The Dive
Came a suited gentleman, a gringo, cigar held tight by his lips, sun glasses on, about five foot ten, perhaps a good weight for his size; he stopped by me and my wife, by Carlos, watched him splash in the water as he came back up for the umpteenth time with the dimes and now even quarters I had thrown into the water.
The gentleman-gringo pulled out several silver dollars as if for this very occasion, and an old 1800’s $20-dollar gold piece, possible worth $300 or $400, or even $500-dollars. Carlos had now come back with the change in his hands I had thrown. His friends, one of them had been waiting above on the dock, the other came up with him, he also had a quarter in his hands. As far as I had figured my day was over throwing money into the Caribbean. But the stranger, or visitor, kept looking out into the waters where the boys had been swimming and beyond, while playing with the hand full of silver dollars and the gold piece; I did not make much of it at the time—his observations beyond the boys diving into the spot where I had thrown most of my coins, not far from the dock; Carlos looking at him, wondering—as I suppose we all were—what was on his mind. At the moment none of us took any notice—notice that is, beyond the fifteen feet he was jumping into the water to get my quarters. Said the gentleman with an air of indifference, smugness to his lips as he pulled the cigar out of his mouth to speak:
“I’ll throw all these in, but only one of you boys can go for it?” It was a question I suppose, rhetorical or not, again I couldn’t say—no one answered him back though. No sooner had he said that that he threw the silver and gold into the water, and Carlos jumped in after them, the man who threw them diligently walked away, had been walking away, continued to walk away and never looked back, I ended up watching him for a moment, peculiar I thought, then turned to see how Carlos was doing, and I saw the back fin of a White Shark about one-hundred feet from the dock, and Carlos was now under the water, how far under I could not tell, but I could not see his body moving about the surface or his body shadow in the water; the coins were heavy and so I assumed he had to go deep to catch and draw together all of them; hence, he had been for about a minute in the cool of the deep. Then it was two minutes, then I could not see the fin any longer, and then his legs appeared, emerged, nothing else. I turned about, and couldn’t see the stranger anymore, either...




18.





End of the Book of Dark Stories



∆

Reviews of the
Author Dennis L. Siluk




Awarded by the city and its Mayor, in December, 2005, Poet Laureate de San Jeronimo de Tunán, Peru; in which he dedicated the book, ‘Poetic Images out of Peru,’ to the City and its Mayor.


From the author and poet, E.J. Soltermann, commented on Dennis' poem in his new book, "Last Autumn and Winter,” called "Night Poem, In the Minnesota Cold," he said: "That is Poetry." I know that is not a lot of works per se, but a powerful statement it is, coming from someone who can judge poetry for its worth; as Dennis once said, “Only a poet is suitable to critique a poet’s poetry.” Rosa Peñaloza



By Rosa Peñaloza,

I have in the past written many comments about Dennis’ work, and today I want to share with you some of his reviews and comments other people have had. He has a variety of literature out there, from short stories (over 225 now), to articles (over 825), to poems (over 1300), to chapbooks (he has done about 13-chapbooks) —and of course his 34-books, and he is working on four other books. Most of this work has been done in the past six years, minus three books, six chapbooks, and about 300-poems (along with some miscellaneous poetry).

For the most part, I think Dennis is best know for his travels and poetry; he has traveled the world over, now it is almost 27-times around the world, or as he said: 687,000-air miles; not to include all the travels he has done cross-countries, on the road, etc., he did when he was young, going to: San Francisco, Omaha, along with Seattle, and the Dakotas; he lived in all those places in the 60s; in the 70s he traveled throughout Europe for four years, during this time he went to Vietnam, in 1971, and came back to Europe thereafter. Now he has spent, or taken eight trips to South America, where he has his second home, and where he loves the Mountains by Huancayo.

Here are some of his reviews:


Note 1: Recent interview on Radio Programas del Perú, concerning his two publications: “Spell of the Andes,” and “Peruvian Poems”; reaching five countries, and three continents; over 15-million people; by Milagros Valverde, 11/15/2005, 11:00 PM. (Milagros read poems from both of Mr. Siluk’s books: “Spell of the Andes” and “The Ice Maiden”.)
Note 2: “Spell of the Andes,” recommended by the Cultural Agency in Lima- Peru; located in Alfredo Benavides # 605 - Apartment 201, phone number 2428942

Note 3: Interviewed by JP Magazine, interviewer Jose Luis Pantoja Ventocilla, who had very positive comments and appreciation for Dennis’ Poetic Peruvian Traditions and Contemporary way of Life; 10/26/2005.

Note 4: Mayor of San Jeronimo, Peru, Jesus Vargas Párraga, “All mayors should recognize Dennis’ work (on his Poetic Traditions of Peru; and favorable articles for the Mantaro Valley Region) and publicize it.... (paraphrased: we should not hide his work)”

Note 5: 91.7 Radio “Super Latina”, 10/19/2005, interviewer Joseito Arrieta, reaching 1.2 million people in the Mantaro Valley Region about the book “Spell of the Andes” (paraphrased): the Municipality and the Cultural House from Huancayo should give an acknowledgement for the work you did on The Mantaro Valley.

Note 6: Channel #5 “Panamericana” 10/16/2005, “Good Morning Huancayo” (in Huancayo, Peru ((population 325,000)); interviewed by reporter: Vladimir Bendezú, on Mr. Siluk’s two books: “Spell of the Andes,” and “Peruvian Poems”: also on, Mr. Siluk’s biography.

*Note 7: Cesar Hildebrandt, International Journalist and Commentator, for Channel #2, in Lima, Peru, on October 7, 2005, introduced Mr. Siluk’s book, “Peruvian Poems,” to the world, saying: “…Peruvian Poems, is a most interesting book, and important….” (Population of Lima, eight million, and all of Peru: twenty-five million)) plus a number of other Latin American countries: reaching about sixty-three million inhabitants, in addition, his program reaches Spain)).

Note 8: More than 240,000-visit Mr. Siluk’s web site a year: see his travels and books…!

Note 9: Mr. Siluk received a signed personal picture with compliments from the Dalai Lama, 11/05, after sending him his book with a letter, “The Last Trumpet…” on eschatology.

Note 10: Ezine Articles [Internet Magazine] 11/2005, recognized by the Magazine Team, as one of 250-top writers, out of 14,700. Christopher Knight, Editor; annual readership: twelve-million (or one million per month). Dennis has about 10,000 readers of his articles, poems and stories, alone on this site per month.

Note 11: Dennis L. Siluk Columnist of the Year, on the International Internet Magazine, Useless-knowledge; December 5, 2005 (Annual Readership: 1.5 million).

Note 12: Dennis L. Siluk was made Special Author, status, for the site www.Freearticles.com

Note 13: Mr. Siluk’s works are on over 400-web sites worldwide as of (early 2005)




☼



More Reviews:


Benjamin Szumskyj: Editor of SSWFT Magazine Australia

“In the Pits of Hell, a Seed of Faith Grows”

"The Macabre Poems: and other selected Poems,"

“…Siluk’s Atlantean poems are also well crafted, from the surreal…to the majestic…and convivial…” and the reviewer adds: “All up, Siluk is a fine poet…His choice of topic and theme are compelling and he does not hold back in injecting his own personal thoughts and feelings directly into his prose, lyrics, odes and verse…” (September 2005)


“…I liked your poem [‘The Bear-men of Qolqepunku’] very much. It is a very poignant piece.”

Aalia Wayfare
Researcher on the Practices
Of the Ukukus


“I just received your book ‘Spell of the Andes,’ and I like it a lot.’

—Luis Guillermo Guedes, Director
Of the Ricardo Palma Museum-House
In Lima, Peru [July, 2005]


“The Original title of the book Dennis L. Siluk presents is ‘Spell of the Andes’ which poems and stories were inspired by various places of our region and can be read in English and Spanish. The book separated in two parts presents the poems that evoked the Mantaro Valley, La Laguna de Paca…Miraflores, among other places. The book is dedicated to ‘the beautiful city of Huancayo’…”

By: Marissa Cardenas, Correo Newspaper,
Huancayo, Peru [7/9/05]
Translated into English by Rosa Peñaloza.



Mr. Siluk’s writings, in particular the book: ‘Islam, in Search of Satan’s Rib,’ induced a letter from Arial Sharon, Prime Minister of Israel, along with a signed picture. [2004]


“You’re a Master of the written world.” [Reference to the book: ‘Death on Demand’]

—Benjamin Szumskyj,
Editor of SSWFT-magazine out of Australia [2005]


A poetic Children’s tale “The Tale of Willy, the Humpback Whale” 1982 Pulitzer Prize entry, with favorable comments sent back by the committee.



“Dennis is a prolific and passionate writer.”

—Matt James,
Editor of ‘useless-knowledge,’ Magazine [2005]



“The Other Door,”…by Dennis L. Siluk…This is a collection of some 45 poems written…over a 20-year period in many parts of the world. Siluk has traveled widely in this country and Europe and some of the poems reflect his impressions of places he has visited. All of them have a philosophical turn. Scattered through the poems—some long, some only three lines—are lyrical lines and interesting descriptions. Siluk illustrated the book with his own pen and ink drawings.” —St. Paul Pioneer Press [1981)



“Your stories are wonderful little vignettes of immigrant life….

“… (The Little Russian Twins) it is affecting….”

—Sibyl-Child (a women’s art and culture journal) by Nancy Protun, Hyattsville, Md.; published by the Little Peoples’ Press, 1983



“The Other Door, by Dennis L. Siluk-62pp. $5….both stirring and mystical….”

—C.S.P. World News [1983]



“For those who enjoy poetry…The Other Door, offers an illustrated collection…Reflecting upon memories of his youth, Siluk depicts his old neighborhood of the 1960’s…Siluk…reflects upon his travels in poems like: ‘Bavaria’s Harvest’ (Augsburg, Germany and ‘Venice in April.’’’

—Evergreen Press
St. Paul, Minnesota [1982]



“Siluk publishes book; Siluk…formerly lived in North Dakota…”

—The Sunday Forum
Fargo-Moorhead, North Dakota [1982]



“Dennis Siluk, a St. Paul native…is the author of a recently released book of poetry called The Other Door….The 34-year old outspoken poet was born and reared in St. Paul. The Other Door has received positive reaction from the public and various publications. One of the poems included in his book, ‘Donkeyland-(A side Street Saga)’, is a reflection of Siluk’s memories…in what was once one of the highest crime areas in St. Paul.” [1983]

—Monitor
St. Paul, Minnesota



“This entertaining and heart-warming story …teaches a lesson, has all the necessary ingredients needed to make a warm, charming, refreshing children’s animated television movie or special.” [1983]

—Form: Producers
Report by Creative
Entertainment Systems;
West Hollywood, CA
Evaluation Editor



The book: ‘The Last Trumpet and the Woodbridge Demon,’ writes Pastor Naason Mulâtre, from the Church of Christ, Haiti, WI; “…I received…four books [The Last Trumpet and the Woodbridge Demon…]. My friend it’s wonderful, we are pleased of them. We are planning to do a study of them twice a month. With them we can have the capacity to learn about the Antichrist. I have read all the chapters. I have…new knowledge about how to resist and fight against this enemy. I understand how [the] devil is universal in his work against [the] church of Jesus-Christ. Thanks a lot for your effort to write a so good book or Christians around the world.” [2002]




☼



Additional (mixed) Notes and Reviews:



Mr. Siluk was the winner of the magazine competition by “The Eldritch Dark”; for most favored writer [contributor] for 2004 [with readership of some 2.2-million].


And received a letter of gratitude from President Bush for his many articles he published in the internet Magazine, “Useless-knowledge.com,” during his campaign for President, 2004 [1.2-million readership].


Still some of his work can be seen in the Internet Ezine Magazine, with a readership of some three-million. [2005, some 350 articles, poems and short stories]


Siluk’s poetic stories and poetry in general have been recently published by the Huancayo, Peru newspaper, Correo; and “Leaves,” an international literary magazine out of India. With favorable responses by the Editor


Mr. Siluk has been to all the locations [or thereabouts] within his stories and poetry he writes; some 683,000-miles throughout the world.


His most recent book is, “The Spell of the Andes,” to be presented at the Ricardo Palma Museum-House in October, 2005, and recently reviewed in Peru and the United States.


From the book, “Death on Demand,” by Mr. Siluk, says author:

E.J. Soltermann
Author of Healing from Terrorism, Fear and Global War:

“The Dead Vault: A gripping tale that sucks you deep through human emotions and spits you out at the end as something better.” (Feb. 2004)


♥

Love and Butterflies
[For Elsie T. Siluk my mother]


She fought a good battle
The last of many—
Until there was nothing left
Where once, there was plenty.

And so, poised and dignified
She said, ‘farewell,’ in her own way
And left behind
A grand old time
Room for another

Love and Butterflies…
That was my mother.


—By Dennis L. Siluk © 7/03




Visit my web site: http://dennissiluk.tripod.com you can also order the books directly by/on: www.amazon.com www.bn.com www.SciFan.com www.netstoreUSA.com along with any of your notable book dealers. Other web sites you can see Siluk’s work at: www.eldritchdark.com www.swft/writings.html www.abe.com www.alibris.com www.freearticles.com and many more



Books by the Author




Out of Print

The Other Door, Volume I [1980]
The Tale of Willie the Humpback Whale [1981]
Two Modern Short Stories of Immigrant life [1984]
The Safe Child/the Unsafe Child [1985]

Presently In Print

The Last Trumpet and the Woodbridge Demon

Angelic Renegades & Rephaim Giants


Tales of the Tiamat [not released]
Can be purchased individually [trilogy]

Tiamat, Mother of Demon I
Gwyllion, Daughter of the Tiamat II
Revenge of the Tiamat III


Mantic ore: Day of the Beast

Chasing the Sun
[Travels of D.L Siluk]

Islam, In Search of Satan’s Rib


The Addiction Books of D.L. Siluk:

A Path to Sobriety,
A Path to Relapse Prevention
Aftercare: Chemical Dependency Recovery


Autobiographical-fiction

A Romance in Augsburg I
Romancing San Francisco II
Where the Birds Don’t Sing III
Stay Down, Old Abram IV

Romance:

Perhaps it’s Love
Cold Kindness

The Suspense short stories of D.L. Siluk:

Death on Demand
[Seven Suspenseful Short Stories]

Dracula’s Ghost
[And other Peculiar stories]

The Mumbler [psychological]

After Eve [a prehistoric adventure]


Poetry:

Sirens
[Poems-Volume II, 2003]

The Macabre Poems [2004]

Spell of the Andes [2005]

Peruvian Poems [2005]

Last autumn and Winter [2006]
[Poems out of Minnesota]

Poetic Images out of Peru
[And other poem, 2006]

From the Amazon to Satipo
[And Other Poems, 2006]

The Fruit-Cake
(Narrative ((story)) written for the Screen)
((2006))



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