THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 10, 2015
Katy Olmos had only two weeks under her belt as a tour guide at Chaco Canyon National Park, but even she knew there was something terribly wrong with the strange man staggering around the bottom of the great kiva at Pueblo Bonito.
“Sir? Sir? This area is off-limits to visitors. You have to stay on the marked trails.”
Where the hell did he come from? Katy swore there was no one in sight when she took her last group of the day through Pueblo Bonito not more than forty-five minutes ago. Not many tourists flocked to the canyon in September, and there were hardly any visitors this Thursday. He seemed to materialize out of the thin dry desert air.
“Sir?” Still no answer. Unsteady, one foot dragging on the ground, he was no more than a black shape moving in the shadows cast by the setting sun. Katy initially thought he might be ill. Then she remembered the stories of all the psychedelic pilgrims, some high on peyote, who came from all over the country to worship at this sacred New Mexican site, burning sage and offering ersatz medicine pouches and healing crystals to give thanks to the ancient spirits at Chaco Canyon. They especially gravitated to the forty kivas around Pueblo Bonito—those circular underground spaces where unknowable ceremonies were performed by the Anasazi people over a thousand years ago. Some believed the sipapu, symbolic entrances to the lower world found at the bottom of the larger kivas, were real portals to another realm.
Katy steadied herself as she climbed down ten feet into the kiva. She glanced over her shoulder as she wandered around the tumbled stone ruins of the old great house at dusk. As Katy got closer, the figure turned to face her, and she gasped. The stranger was covered in blood. A rich thick crimson spattered across his pale face and down his plaid flannel shirt and corduroy pants, just like the gruesome arterial sprays Katy remembered from those first-person shooter games her boyfriend, Pablo, loved so much.
He seemed as genuinely puzzled by his presence here in the middle of the desert twilight as Katy was. He looked straight at her and asked, “Where?” before he collapsed to the ground as though struck from behind.
“Shit!” Katy was looking forward to ending her shift quickly and heading home, maybe stopping by to visit her abuelita, but now she needed to call this in and take precious time to file an incident report.
While she waited for the other park rangers and police to arrive, Katy sat down next to the stranger, slipped on her latex gloves, and examined him gingerly for any wounds. Stopping the bleeding was job one, she recalled from her first-aid training. But she did not notice any obvious cuts, certainly nothing to account for all this splatter. He looked otherwise unremarkable, just another young white dude, close to her own age, maybe twenty-six or twenty-seven. He smelled funny. Not like the desert, Katy thought, but more like something dank and deep, like a root cellar.
Where did all this damn blood come from if not from his own veins? Katy shivered as the shadows of the deep kiva grew longer. Maybe he killed some animal … or maybe some person. Initially wary that this shape shambling about the kiva pit was one of the ghosts of the Ancient Ones she heard about from local legends, Katy now worried she was sitting next to a murderer.
“You didn’t come to worship, did you, gringo?” said Katy. “You came to hunt.”
A bloodied hand reached out and grabbed Katy’s wrist before she could pull away. The man’s sudden movement startled her, but she did not dare move. His face was now just inches from her own.
“Did it work?” he yelled. “Did it work? Just tell me if it worked!”
Terrified, Katy barely had a chance to open her mouth before the stranger passed out again.
Katy noticed his backpack just minutes before the police arrived. It was dark blue with a New York Comic Con logo. Inside she found a thermos, a granola bar, and a manila folder filled with typewritten pages, newspaper clippings, and photos, all held together with dozens of paper clips and rubber bands. As the police siren echoed closer along the paved road leading to Pueblo Bonito, Katy pulled off the last rubber band, opened the folder, and stared at the first page.
The first line read: If you are reading this, you can assume something terrible has happened to me.
Whether a manuscript, a manifesto, or a confession, she had no idea, but Katy was certain of one thing: if she gave this to the police, she would never discover what happened to the man lying unconscious next to her. She slipped the folder into her own backpack just as the police appeared at the top of the pit.
A dutiful granddaughter, Katy had called her abuelita and told her she had to study that night but would happily reschedule her dinner visit, maybe on Monday. Much later that night, she sat down in her kitchen to read the manuscript over a glass of rosè and a bowl of leftover arroz con pollo.
Much of it seemed organized in vaguely chronological order. Some items stood out as Katy flipped through the pages.
From a podcast transcript: This summer, we’re traveling across this great land of ours to track down every lurid secret buried in the ground, every lurking Damned Thing that science wants you to ignore, every haunted place that’s given you goosebumps, and even some you’ve never heard about.
From a blog post titled “BREAKING: Kevin Starkly Disappears in Pine Barrens”: That was a pretty irresponsible stunt you pulled on us back in Harrisville, NJ.
An entry in a dream journal: The next time I saw Nikola Tesla we were standing in the Rocky Mountains.
Another blog post: Meteor Girl had a major breakthrough last night in our experiments with lucid dreaming.
And a reproduction of an old newspaper clipping from 1897: The tranquil morning air of Aurora was rudely disturbed today at 6 o’clock, as eyewitnesses reported the appearance of the remarkable airship which has been sailing across the country, flying at an unusually low altitude.
“Well, I guess I better start at the beginning,” said Katy as she poured another glass of wine. “This is going to take a few hours.”
This is what she read.
From the note attached to the “Aurora Manuscript”
September 9, 2015
If you are reading this, you can assume something terrible has happened to me.
I wished to compile this information, not so much to rationalize this decision for myself, because I have never felt so clear-minded about any mission I have ever undertaken, but rather that I might leave behind some coherent account. I’ve attempted to collect the facts—all the things I know to be true—before proceeding. The document you’re now holding is the fruit of my single-minded research.
I am astonished by the number of lost souls I’ve encountered during my travels in the last few weeks, wandering aimlessly across the back roads and small towns, much like that group that ambushed us along that dirt road in Ohio. Some have forgotten their own names. Others feel compelled to tell their stories to every stranger they meet like some cursed modern-day mariner. Most feel safer traveling together so they form large communes for protection, much like the hobo encampments during the Great Depression, I imagine. It’s like the blind leading the blind through a landscape of fear.
There are even some who obsessively scrawl “The Pilot Awakens” over every surface because they sense this is some monumental turning point in the course of human history. I’ve documented many here from my own personal observations. They are too embarrassed or ashamed to tell their families or friends where they are. And all of them, every last man and woman, are devastated by the secret knowledge they’ve gained.
They don’t know what to believe anymore, do they?
I can’t help but feel somehow responsible for everything—all the lost, broken people, all the deaths. But I think I finally have a plan to put things right. Does that sound insane?
I’ve spent my time traveling across several states seeking out every Damned Place on the map. I’ve explored reports of rifts in the space–time continuum at Camp Hero State Park in Montauk and pursued sightings there of reptile–humanoid hybrids that walk upright on two legs. I’ve come face-to-face with a monstrous phantom dog that appears regularly near the Ore Mine Bridge in Warfieldsburg, Maryland. The thing is the size of a horse with a single, glowing red eye in the middle of its forehead. I was on my way to West Feliciana parish in Louisiana to stay overnight at the most haunted hotel in the South, but I’ve since received reports from a small town near the Everglades where the dead are supposedly rising from their graves. So I’ve been keeping busy.
You need to know one thing before I go any further: This is all real—except for the stories, of course, but even they carry more than a kernel of truth. These are real places, real people, and real events. I’ve tried to gather together all the necessary documents, all the important evidence, but most of it is also available online for anyone who wishes to verify the specifics.
It’s crazy how many people already know part of the story, isn’t it? We all have part of the story even if everyone doesn’t understand the whole. I’ve tried to lay out each of the puzzle pieces so the overview makes sense. The easiest step was determining where to begin, because we all know it really started long before that unfortunate incident this past July in the Jersey Pine Barrens. It began before the earthquake, even before Nikola Tesla began his misbegotten experiments in the Colorado Rockies back in 1899. But I’m getting ahead of myself.
As I said, anyone can put together the beginning pieces. The newspaper articles, the websites, all the documents cited are waiting to be uncovered by the ambitious and the patient seekers of truth. But I fear I’m the only one still alive today who can tell the last part of the story, because only I know how it must end.
###
From the Dallas Morning Call, April 17, 1897
A Windmill Demolishes It
By S. E. Haydon
The tranquil morning air of Aurora was rudely disturbed today at 6 o’clock, as eyewitnesses reported the appearance of the remarkable airship which has been sailing across the country, flying at an unusually low altitude.
However, wonderment soon turned to dismay as the craft, beset by apparent malfunction, collided with Judge Proctor's windmill in the town's northern precinct. The resultant explosion rent the craft asunder, casting debris across the landscape. Judge Proctor's windmill, a landmark of the community, lay shattered and ruined, as well as his prize-winning flower garden.
Amidst the chaos, authorities grapple with the grim reality that the pilot of the ill-fated craft was likely its sole occupant. Though his remains are marred beyond recognition, preliminary investigations suggest he was not an inhabitant of this world. Mr. T.J. Weems, an esteemed officer of the U.S. Army Signal Service, posits that the unfortunate pilot hailed from the distant red planet of Mars.
Also recovered from the wreckage were papers adorned with inscriptions in a hieroglyphic script, whose meaning remains a mystery. These cryptic documents are believed to recount the pilot's celestial odyssey. The very construction of the craft itself remains a riddle. Fashioned from a peculiar alloy, bearing semblance to a fusion of aluminum and silver, the vessel defies conventional explanation. Crowds flock to the crash site, eager to behold the remnants of this alien craft and to glean insights into the mysteries that lie beyond our ken.
The pilot’s funeral will take place tomorrow.
From the Dream Journal of Anthony Fermia
July 9, 2015
There I am, sitting in the main reading room of the New York Public Library on Forty-Second Street, where I work, and Richard Harrigan is right next to me, stuffing a load of books into his backpack. It’s the same type of dream I’ve had many times before. Everything is illuminated by a bright, saturated light, almost blinding in its intensity, and everything, every scrap of paper, every piece of furniture, even the scratches on the table, seems to have a life of its own. So I knew right away this is one of those dreams where the dead want to talk to me. That’s why I can remember every detail, every word spoken in these dreams, because the dead never want me to forget. That’s cool because they haven’t spoken to me in a while.
I tell Richard that he has to get out because I’m closing up for the night.
“We’ll need all these books for our trip with Starkly,” he says.
I turn around and we’re standing outside in the dark, except it’s not Forty-Second Street or Bryant Park behind the library, but some bizarre, prehistoric landscape that I’ve never seen before in my life. We’re in the middle of some swamp or bog. Gingko trees and towering pines surround us. But the pine trees are all dead, their bare branches tangled together blocking the face of the moon.
We’re all walking together through this strange place, Richard and me, Kevin Starkly, and Johnny Walters. We’re trudging through this swamp, heading toward this stone wall seemingly misplaced in the middle of nowhere. Veins of ivy crisscross its length. I notice openings in the structure, like windows—or maybe some of the bricks just fell out long ago. Did someone once live here?
Johnny says, “It looks like a medieval castle.”
As we’re moving along, Richard throws all those books from the library on the ground and walks on them as though they’re stepping-stones. I’m following close behind, stepping on top of these scattered volumes, afraid I’ll lose my way if I don’t. They feel odd beneath my feet, bobbling and uncertain as if the books are floating on the surface of a pond.
And right ahead of us I see the little ghost girl named Abigail, crying in the dead forest. I’ve seen her before in my dreams and she always scares the hell out of me. She looks about six years old, and her faded dress is in tatters. Gray-white ash from God knows what incinerated home is plastered to her face like a death mask. Her dark hair is filthy with dirt and soot. The poor thing always looks as though she’s walked through a blazing holocaust. And whenever I see her, she always has ugly, horrible things to tell me.
As I get closer, I hear her crying, actually sobbing uncontrollably. Tears from her right eye have worn rivulets through the caked ash on her face. The left eye is an empty socket.
“Why are you crying, Abigail?” I ask.
She stops sobbing just long enough to say, “Please, Mr. Fermia, don’t go here. This is a bad place.”
The other guys kept walking right past me. I try to comfort her, but it’s no use. She keeps wailing. “Please, Mr. Fermia, just go away. Nothing good ever happens here. This is where the bad monster will get all of you.”
So I run after the guys, wobbling on the floating books. I’m yelling for them to stop before it’s too late. But I see Kevin stepping off the path, and he’s crossing past the stone wall heading away in another direction.
I scream, “Kevin, don’t go there!”
But I’m too late. Kevin is already sinking fast into the ground. He’s flailing around desperately, reaching out his arms, trying to hang on to something. We all ran over and grabbed his hands and started pulling him up. But the force sucking Kevin into the swampy earth is too powerful. It starts dragging all four of us into the ground despite how hard we’re struggling. Finally, reluctantly, we released Kevin.
I see him disappear under the ground like a drowning man. He takes one last gulp of air before his head is sucked under with a sickening, plopping sound.
And then I woke up.
###
