Part Two - Chapter Eight

8. Chapter Eight

If I ever get outta here, thought of given it all away, to registered charity, all I need is a fine today if we ever get outta here, if we ever get outta here.

Paul McCartney and Wings
Band on the Run.

Morning brought pain.

Lord when have I ever hurt so bad? We were not up with the birds that morning, far from it. We all were in bad shape. But we had earned it. It was a beautiful morning with bright yellow sunlight filtering through the green leaves that were newly born this spring. I think Steve was the first out of the hatch visiting the nearby facilities, you know the one just left of the third tree on the right.

I don't think we talked about anything particularly for a while, it was just grunts and groans. Steve poked his head into the tent smiling broadly and trying to hide his own pain. "Want Breakfast!?", was his morning call.

"I can't move.", I responded. Phil rolled out of bed silently, looked up at Steve and asked for directions to the facilities. (primarily so he wouldn't step on them.) "You cooking this morning?" I asked Steve. Laughing a response, he said "Sure."

I laid there for a while wishing the morning away and heard Steve and Phil talking, though I could not make out what they were saying. After laying there a while, I rolled out and poked my head out of the tent. They were fussing around working out a breakfast. Bacon was sizzling in the Iron Skillet, and Steve looked to be working up a batch of pancakes. Yes we even hauled syrup up that muddy slide.

Steve said, "Geez you look like death warmed over." To which I replied, that I felt just like I was dead. As the morning progressed so did Steve and Phil's silent concern over my condition. I did as little as possible. I had over done my self in a very serious way. Not only did I hurt from the exertions, but I hurt because of exhaustion. I ate breakfast with them, crawled to my hammock and planned to do nothing for the rest of the day.

"OK UP! we are going exploring!"

What? I thought uh? A simple groan and "Huh?!" escaped my mouth to Phil's order. "You go ahead, I am here for the day!"

"Nope." he simply responded, "You are up we are all three going to explore the area! We are in the wilderness and we need to enjoy the solitude."

Well I made it up and had they not chosen to go down hill, I would have probably collapsed immediately. But I was starting to feel pretty good so I got moving.

We went down the next ravine, it looked like there was a creek. A creek of pristine waters we hoped. It was much easier going and less of an incline than the one we climbed up and we did not have those ridiculous packs on our back either.

It was a beautiful morning and the temperatures were quite moderate. We found a stream. Phil and Steve immediately began to strip down and bathe. Well it wasn't that warm. I just had a bad feeling about getting chilled. Of course, after testing the water, it was cold. I tried washing my hair out a bit, the guys were poster boys for the polar bear club. We even drank from those clean clear pristine mountain waters.

"You hear that?", said Steve.

Phil said, "Uh-huh, what is that, is that..."

"A car?", I completed for him.

"Sounds like it, sort of." was Steve's reply and it held the tone of wishful thinking.

The cold water on my scalp was nearly too much. I began to shiver and it started to sap the strength from me. I sat down to rest for a bit and I noticed that Phil and Steve started looking concerned.

"Let's start back and we can get a lunch going.", said Phil. We started back and had to climb a ways. Somewhere along the way apart from hearing the sounds of cars on a gravel road, I became aware that Steve and Phil were taking turns helping me. I must have been worse off than I felt.

Fifty minutes of hike and climb took us back to the campsite. I was in bad shape, but so were the guys. Not as bad as I, but bad. I slept in the hammock, woke and slept. Steve made another trip up to the hill looking off.

"Hey Phil.."

"Yes?"

"You hear that?"

"What?"

"That, sounds like a car again."

"Well yeah now that you mention it."

"Sounds like it is on a gravel road, but where?"

"Your right, it does."

Off to our left of our camp, my guess of the direction was North West, we kept hearing the sound of cars off and on that day. Steve made is way back down the slope and first thing out of his mouth was, "You hear what sounds like cars on a gravel road?".

Phil and I just looked at each other and confirmed to Steve that we were hearing it too.

If there was a road over that way, it was down the next valley, then over that rise. And that was going to be quite a haul. None of us was up to that effort.

Steve said, "If there is a road over there it is NOT on the map. There is nothing on the map in this area."

I said, "How old is the map? Is it out of date?"

"Could be I guess, but we cannot see anything, if it is a dirt road shouldn't we be able to see dust?"

We spent the rest of that day sleeping and eating, and wondering about that road noise.

2.

We had our dinner that day late in the day. Sun was going down but that was about what we had planned. As Dusk was settling, we were banking the fire and enjoying Coffee. Watching the night sky turn shades of blue, orange and pink.

Steve asked, "Phil, what do you think we should do about setting the mood, getting things right? I mean we just meditate and raise energy or what?"

Phil had told us about an encounter in Colorado where he saw a UFO and tried to bring it to him with his mind. The craft stopped in the air and hung then obviously struggled. They reached into his mind and asked him to stop or they would crash. He let them go.

Phil said, "Lets raise some energy, protect ourselves and send a beacon of light out for them. Lets let them come to us. They know we are here and why."

No longer did we try to chant or speak, it was silent meditation. We raised white light around us and meditated for a bit. Coming out of it Steve said he saw a vision of them coming for us. Clear in his mind he saw a ship and that it was destined to come and meet us.

Steve always saw the most clearly for us. Phil said that this confirmed his feelings and we settled back and watched the darkness overtake the night sky.

Every blip in the sky that moved was a UFO for us, I am sure we saw Skylab and a few airliners in the Atlanta pattern.

"I hope this works." I said.

Steve said he could see them, see their craft. They were on their way. This lifted our spirits and fueled the adrenaline that was building in our systems.

The gray of dusk had settled into the black of night. Far away from any city, there was no reflective city light, and night was night. Black as black save for the fire and the twinkle of the stars, there was no moon.

With a light breeze that made the night pleasant, there was a white halo of energy that hung over us. We were protected from the night and those things that crept with it.

We were confident that they were coming, I was seeing in my mind that they were on their way.

We had spent a lot of time mind traveling in the years that led up to this so we were used to doing this among ourselves. We would make purposeful journeys to places we both knew and did not know. Often we would choose a place that only one of us had been then after meditating and traveling, we would let the two who had not been there in body describe things to the one who had.

It was fun and honed our skill and let us trust what we saw when we went places in meditation that none of us had been. It is a thing that only works when we are not trying to impress one another. There has to be ultimate trust in the group. No, I saw that too, type of comments, but validation of what we saw.

Suddenly we all became aware that something had changed. What was it? What was different? Phil said it, "The wind has stopped." A cold chill ran down my spine. It was deathly quite. No insect noises, nothing. It doesn't happen like this. No birds, no wind, no insect noises, no leaves rustling with mice or other mammals running around.

Dead silence.

The anticipation was overwhelming. We looked up into the sky, all around. We could see nothing different.

3.

At this point we all lost consciousness.

Slowly a huge ship appeared over the trees. No lights, just a dark shadow. Out of the wood walked three slim shapes. Large black eyes, overly large heads, gray skin.

Eyokk spoke to the other two in thought, with his mind, for they had no mouths to speak. "Take them to the lab for examination." It was their intent to take us on board. In fact we wanted this, but we saw ourselves as partners not test animals. "We must make sure the implants are still working." Norban responded, "Their memory must be altered as well." Koryab raised a hand and we started to rise off the ground. Eyokk said, "This is most welcome to have them all in the same place at the same time. We can ensure that we have them in tune and keep their bodies out of tune with their souls."

Koryab spoke, "Why did the dark ones..."

As Koryab spoke he vanished, vaporizing sparkles of light falling to the ground. Then Eyokk and Norban. The great ship above them suddenly shuddered and shot off into the horizon. A pin point of light.

Our three bodies dropped from about two feet off the ground to the ground with a thud.

I groaned and sat up. There was total disorientation, then we focused like we were coming out of a meditation.

Steve vocalized first, "Some-thing's very wrong!"

"No kidding." I responded. I was suddenly cold, as was Phil, deep cold. Fear gripped all of us. They were not here and the enemy was. What was happening?

"We have to get into the tent." This was Phil. His eyes were wide and we all three were petrified. We threw a couple of more logs on the fire and found we ached all over. Quickly moving into the tent.

"We have to put up energy in the tight space to protect us, the dark ones are here and they are all around us." said Phil. In my knowing Phil, I had never seen him afraid. I felt what was around us, I don't remember feeling unsafe, but I was greatly uneasy.

Phil was afraid. In hindsight I believe it was because he knew just how close we came to loosing our ability to do what we came for. That we could have lost our lives.

Something in me did not feel that, and that was either my own fore knowledge, or ignorance.

That night was the longest night of our lives.

Some hours later Phil needed to go to the bathroom, and it took all the courage he had to leave that tent. While we were in there we knew we were safe. But outside? Who knew, especially separated. Phil had to go very badly or he would not have ventured outside. It was pain he could not delay.

He suddenly reappeared and jumped back into the tent. It would be more hours till daylight. And we talked trying to understand what had happened. None of it made any sense. They were coming to see us and take us up into their ships we were sure. The enemy had come and stopped them, so we would not awaken.

Well that is what we concluded. We were wrong, very wrong.

The dark ones saved our very souls.

If the grays had gotten us all three together, they could have kept us under their control for a very long time and perhaps even ended our mission to save this world.

Like fools we had opened a doorway for them to reach us. The dark ones came just in time. But they could not approach us. We were still using white light and we were not ready to understand. Conditioning takes a long time to reverse and we needed that time.

4.

When the sun started to come up we actually got a little sleep. But we were not going to dally now. After a short bit, we got up and going. We packed up, took down the tent and started down the hill for the car.

It was only about a thirty minute hike back to the car, all downhill. We loaded up and started out back down that dirt road. But we came across a gravel road that we had not come down and on a hunch took it.

Curving around a little, it went up a slope and we recognized the hilltop we had been on. It was just down from the rise that Steve had wanted to hike on up to. We just looked at each other and felt foolish. We could have parked and walked down to the place we camped. On around the corner was a house.

That pristine mountain water could well have been sewage run off.

It wasn't the most depressing time we ever had, but we were certainly quite daunted. But we had shared and renewed our friendship.

Getting back to Steve's we cleaned up and got dinner. The next morning we would be heading back up the Interstate and the ten hour drive back home.

We reminisced and complained about the luck. We also wondered and tried to understand what had happened to us. It would take years and a turning round of the light to understand how we had been saved. But the struggle was really only beginning.