NaNoWriMo, Day Twenty

While I normally put in a lot of  internal links to previous, related posts here, I won’t be doing that for what I hope will be thirty NaNoWriMo posts. If you have jumped into or stumbled onto this story in mid-adventure, there are plenty of other ways to navigate around the site to find previous installments. Actually doing so is left as an exercise to the student.

Good thing I got out to a quick start and can afford to coast for a day or two. Nothing serious, just a mild bug of some sort, sore throat, headache, tough to focus, just want to sleep a lot. Great, let’s write some more dialogue!

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN (continued)

 

“OK, let’s start with the least weird stuff. Do you have enough bandwidth there on your phone to pull up graphics and maps, things like Google Earth?”

“Yeah, we’ve got decent civic wi-fi here. What do you want to show me?”

“Load Google Earth and check out the location of that compound.”

“It’s not there. So what? The place looked to be new, this picture must be a year or two old. Please don’t tell me that you’re spooked into becoming the Bonnie and Clyde of conspiracy theorists over that.”

“No, you’re right,it’s an older picture. Look at the date stamp. It’s over twenty years old. Now look at the areas around you. Santa Fe, Durango, even little places right close to you such as Shiprock, Bloomfield, Archuleta, and Rattlesnake. Check out pictures for any random piece of desert or mountains anywhere in the area. What are all of the image date stamps for them? They’re all less than two years old. Why is this area north of Farmington the only one that’s over twenty years old?”

“OK, it’s a glitch, a coincidence. Google Earth has an old photo showing for one grid section. Big deal.”

“But it does have the new picture.” Jason walked her through the procedure to force an update to show the most current picture. “It’s not an accident. And it’s not just Google Earth. Check Yahoo Maps. They have their own database of maps, aerial photos, and satellite images. The compound doesn’t show there either, and there’s no current image, but all of the surrounding areas are current.”

“OK, I’ll give you that someone’s trying to keep this place hidden. Tom had mentioned that there were some powerful forces at work here. That doesn’t mean it’s time to assume the worst.”

“I’m just getting started. I’m sending over a couple of the pictures Tom took yesterday. Oh, well, I guess by now it’s two days ago. Take a look, is that what you saw when you were flying?”

“Yeah, that’s it. And…?”

“Did you see the train tracks?”

“Sure, they’ve been there for years, they’re abandoned.”

“Do you see those tracks marked on any of the online maps? Or on your FAA sectionals? Or visible in any of the online pictures, even the current ones that show part of the compound being built? I can prove that they’ve been digitally erased from all of those pictures, and someone did a world-class job of it. I don’t know how they got into the different mapping databases, but those tracks aren’t shown anywhere. And they’re not abandoned. We can prove that too.”

“Okay, let’s take your assertions as fact. I still don’t see anything that can’t be explained away by a paranoid multi-billionaire who wants to be left alone. Out in these parts some folks still think that Howard Hughes and D.B. Cooper may be hiding out together in some cabin, so you need more. You said you had video of something spooky in Tom’s house that he couldn’t see but his cat could. Do you want to run that by me?”

“I don’t really want to, but I’m uploading it to your phone now anyway.”

Margaret watched the video and then gave an exasperated sigh. She counted backwards from ten before replying.

“Jason, it’s really, really late and this day has well and truly sucked. Either you gave me the wrong file or you and Tom need to get back on your meds and leave nice folk like me alone.”

“I don’t understand. You got the file I sent?”

“Yep, I can see what I’m guessing is Tom’s living room. It looks like a nice place. He’s reading, the cat is in the bay window. That video?”

“Yeah, you don’t think the thing hovering in the air over his head is even a little bit unusual, especially since he can’t see it at all?”

“That would be your problem, Jason. I don’t see anything in this video that’s weird, unusual, wacky, supernatural, bizarre, or other worldly. I see Tom get up and walk around the room like he’s doing some kind of voodoo ritual dance, squatting and staring, then he raises his hands and the cat jumps on him. What part did I miss?”

“Hold on.” Jason was silent for a while before another file showed up on her phone. “Can you look at this for me, please?”

Margaret looked at the pictures in the file. They were fuzzy, but seemed to show a rack of pottery. “What am I looking at here? Vases? Pots?”

“Look at the middle one on the bottom shelf. What do you see?”

“It’s fuzzy,but it looks like a couple of cats staring up at the sky.”

“Do you see anything in the sky that they’re looking at?”

“No, just cats staring into the sky.”

“Fascinating,” said Jason. “This does make it much harder to convince you that we’re not nuts, but in the big picture, this whole puzzle just got a lot more weird. Hold on a second.”

Margaret had gotten as cold as she wanted to get for the night, so she did a 180° turn and headed back for the hanger. She now regretted trying to do the right thing and help Tom, even assuming that Tom needed help. For all she knew this “Ellen” person was the head doctor at some rehab or psych ward and Tom was an escaped patient. That would explain his “kidnapping”.

She would go home, get some sleep, and check out Tom’s hotel and rental car in the morning. If he wasn’t there, she would just go to the sheriff, fill out some reports, then contact the national pilot’s group for some legal help with the lawyers who had shown up yesterday. Oh, and she would have to get some good computer guy to flush out her phone and office computer so that this wacko Jason didn’t have access to them anymore.

Her phone pinged as a file uploaded and Jason came back on the line. “Margaret, are you still there? Please take a look at the picture I just uploaded. Tell me what you see, please.”

Margaret opened the file. “It’s a black oval or circle, with a sawtooth edge around the outside, the teeth blades turning into the center. There are a couple more rows of saw teeth inside of that. It looks kind of like one of those blades they use at the mills to shove logs though to strip off the bark. Is this some kind of Rorschach test or something?”

“No, but it’s interesting that you can see that when you couldn’t see the others. In the video of Jason’s office, a disk like this was hovering in the air about three feet above his head in the middle of the room. Tom’s cat was staring at it the entire time. At first it was smaller and completely black, then it got bigger, about manhole cover sized, and we could see some grey blobs moving around. Then the teeth started coming in from the edges, just as Tom raised his hands
and walked toward it. That’s when the cat jumped and knocked him away.”

“Tom’s an escaped mental patient and you’re some kind of co-dependent, enabler freak, aren’t you?” Margaret didn’t even bother to make it sound like she might be kidding or being sarcastic.

“I wish we were, but I’m not and as far as I know, Tom’s not either. Tom later saw images of those things in the sky being stared at by cats on that funeral urn in a gallery in Santa Fe. When he asked about it, the video ad that was showing them got immediately switched to different ad. And the woman who owns the gallery told Tom that the artist who did the urns was named Dahlia, which is the same name that Ellen knew Tom’s aunt by.”

“Just so we’re on the same page, you might want to listen to yourself. You, Tom, and Tom’s cat can all see this spooky, shark-mouth, invisible thing in the air and on pottery, but no one else can. The rest of us can’t see it even in your supposed picture of it. And you’re going to stick with that story?”

“That’s what we know, cats and spooky disks in the air that the cats can see. Which reminds me, Tom believed there was a similar incident while he was sitting with Ellen and her cat in Ellen’s store in Colorado. Ellen started to… Wait, what did Tom say? They were sitting, Tom saw the cat acting just like his had been, staring up into space and twitching. Ellen started to get up right where Tom thought the thing was, so he grabbed her arm to stop her, and… That’s it, Ellen knew then that there was one of these things. When Tom stopped her, she knew that he knew. That’s why she gave him that song and dance and took off without him!”

“Jason, I’m happy for you. Say hello to the dungeon master for me. I’ve had enough of this. Whatever fantasy role playing game you guys are playing, keep me out of it. Leave me alone.” She hung up. She doubted that she had heard the last of Jason, but she would worry about getting a restraining order later if needed.

By now she was on the block in front of the hanger next to hers. There was no sign of anyone or anything out except for the occasional growl of a car or truck on the highway behind her. She cut off of the sidewalk and started across the parking lot toward her jeep.

It was parked right outside of the hanger door, and the area around the door was illuminated by a high-powered flood light up by the edge of the hanger’s roof. Margaret stopped about ten feet from her car, transfixed by the sight before her.

Sitting on the roof and hood of her jeep were more than a dozen cats. She had never seen any of them before in her life. But all of them were staring up in unison at a spot in the air about ten feet in the air. All of the cats were alert, on guard, wiggling and squirming as if ready to leap upward at something. Margaret looked up but could see nothing there.

Carefully and slowly, Margaret took out her cell phone and hit the redial button. Chills were running up and down her spine and her legs were getting rubbery. On the first ring, Jason answered.

“Jason, quickly please, do you have access to the security camera that looks into the parking lot outside my hanger?”

“Yes, I can pull up that… Jesus!”

Margaret heard a loud train whistle blowing from a few miles away to the southeast, back in the heart of town, probably from a freight train lumbering through. Then, far off to the northeast, she heard another train whistle, this one different, more shrill, higher pitched, almost like the whistle of a calliope.

As the twin train whistles sounded, the cats simultaneously all jumped down from her jeep and scattered into the darkness, leaving Margaret alone in the cold. Despite the late hour and low temperatures, Margaret suddenly found herself covered in sweat.

“Are you okay?” Jason asked. “Did you see any of it?”

“I didn’t see a thing except for the cats, Jason, but that’s got to be the freakiest thing I’ve ever seen in my life. There was something there, wasn’t there?”

“Just like in Tom’s house, but bigger. I’d guess it was ten feet across.”

“Right.” Margaret tried to slow her breathing and her racing heart. “I’m going to go get some sleep, Jason, if I can drive home without crashing. I’ll call you in the morning and we’ll figure out what we have to do next.”