On The Very Fringes Of War In The Heavens

 

It was a full house for the night. There were two old sofas and two armchairs and Roops slept upstairs in a little room on the second story. We did the best we could to settle in with assorted blankets and pillows, too tired to even talk.

I woke up first. The light was just starting to come up. It was about 6am, and it took me a second to remember why I was sprawled on half of a sofa with Lou on the other half. Then I was just happy to see that everyone was here and safe, including Bubby the Wonder Dog. Bubby snored by the way.

Elvin woke and sat up on his side of the other sofa. He looked owlishly around the room. “Hey, Elvin” I said, “what did you do with the keys to the service dept out at the P-Sec place?” 

“I threw them. I tried to put them someplace they would never find them. So, I threw them behind the stacks of junk. Maybe they won’t be able to lock anybody else out there for a while” he said. He appeared pleased at the memory.

Then we attended to Mrs. Steele in her recliner. Elvin brought her some tea. I made some biscuits in Roops’ little kitchen. He had a small bathroom upstairs, so we took turns showering. It’s never wonderful to put grubby clothes back on after a shower, but better to have showered anyhow. Doug, awake now, grabbed a biscuit, and stood watching through the small window at the top of the door, as if he was expecting someone or something.

Lou was quiet and hung out with Bubby, hand feeding him the last of the jerky out of my backpack, but she showered and ate too.

At last, Roops himself came down the little staircase. He was rubbing his beard and looking huge and serious. “Say Doug,” he said, “I have some news for you.” He found his big creaky chair and took a seat. I brought him a couple of biscuits and some tea. He nodded thanks.

“Things are getting a little complicated in inner space. The Shorties say that a watch of two Spookies are sniffing for all four of you kids. They found the van last night. It has a simple tracker on it. Ol’ Wilson at P-Sec is plenty pissed off that you took one of his vans. You made him look real bad to World Con. Good thing you didn’t bring it by here! They still don’t know where you are. The problem is, as you know, they can smell living warm blood and they hear your heart beating. But they have to get relatively close to do so. I don’t know if your cloaking has any effect on them. You still need to get out of here though. My mother can stay here with me, for now. They would only take her as collateral, so she’s ok.” Mrs. Steele beamed at her son.

Doug, standing and looking out the window again, said “hush, they’re here!” Thin, tall, and severe, his blue eyes followed some action out on the street that none of the rest of us could see!

As I had heard earlier from Roops, Spookies, as he called them because they are translucent, are about seven feet tall, they are the color of a rain cloud, but insubstantial looking. They are fully able to kill with just their hands. It’s like they are the goblins of old. Very dangerous and they hate mankind completely. One of the very strange things about Spookies is that their spatial orientation is not the same as ours. If you see one, he will appear to be leaning or askew.

“Something weird is happening if those guys aren’t weird enough! Wait! What!” he yelped! “I saw them, but they just blew up! They like evaporated!” He turned around and stared at all of us. “There is nothing out there!”

About then, a tiny spinning pearl of light started to appear in the center of the room. It got our attention and then commenced to grow slowly. Its patterned surface glowed with a mild milky light. It grew. It drew near to Doug when it had reached about three feet in diameter.

“Doug Simpson. We bring word from All Being to you. Peace. You are to return to Jennifer’s house, and it will be Novus Ordo’s home. We will shelter your presence there. Even now people are walking to meet you there” said the voice with no location.

“How shall we get there” asked Doug. “Just walk, you will be watched and guarded” the voice answered. “The store will be safe for you.”

I sat with my arm around Lou, watching as our whole world turned on a pivot again. She held onto Bubby’s collar tightly with her left hand. Elvin was sitting watching everyone’s reactions to this visitation. His eyes wandered from person to person. He was truly a bottom-line kind of guy. We would hear from him sooner or later.

Roops watched quietly from his mighty chair. His mom had dropped off to sleep somehow. Her gentle snores filled the room.

The Light slowly left our presence, first by diminishing in size and then by flying up and winking out. I didn’t think at that point that the Light was where the ET physically existed, I thought it was a kind of repeater or projection, and it certainly worked to get our attention.

The four of us, two young guys, and two girls and a worldly-wise dog, prepared to hike out to my and Lou’s place again. An awful lot had happened in just a few days. I wondered if sometime in the far future we would be thinking of these odd days and how it would seem from there.

We had a little powwow with Roops. He said he wasn’t in charge of any of this, he was just a channel of communication. He had access to World Com. transmissions, which could at least be a source of fair warning. He reminded us that the Black Ones had a beachhead on earth in the Dome of the Rock, but that really, they had no chance of victory. But, he said, there was bound to be some interesting time ahead of us all. He reminded us that the Black Ones enter each human heart, if they do at all, by a back door and to watch over our hearts carefully.

None of us three had seen the Spookies blow up, so we were fine, but Doug shuddered a bit. There was no sign of them on the street. No bodies at all, not any sign. Swept clean.

Doug and I did the shopping. We left the kids and the dog at the portentous bus stop. Nothing happened to them. They were there when we got back with our purchases. It wasn’t much, but you can only carry so much for miles in a backpack.

Once more over the river, I noticed again the Follow Me lettering on the sidewalk. Well, I knew now who we were following. Doug Simpson. Native of Arlington and anointed leader of the Novus Ordo!

Even though it was still midday, it was getting chilly out on the road. Soon there would be frost in the mornings. We checked Mrs. Steele’s house to make sure the doors were closed, and windows secured. It looked just as we had left it. We passed all the same houses as before. Nothing looked any different, but it was different, even if they didn’t know it yet. The war in the heavens had touched lowly Milltown, on the river and by the bay.

Bubby’s pink eggshells were still in the road. Well, very few wheeled vehicles ever passed this way. He sniffed them as we walked by. “Thanks for the eggs, Jen, by the way,” Bubby said. I think he winked at me!

Walking toward us, on the other side of my place, were a young man and a young woman walking together. Sometimes they held hands. He carried a sort of homemade utility bag on his left shoulder. I could see that he had shoulder length black hair and unremarkable outdoor clothing. He wore cowboy boots though. Didn’t see many of those! She had on a long cotton dress, red with some ornate print and over it a heavy wool sweater in black yarn. She had regulation brown hair and was a tall girl. Her hair was up in a loose knot of some kind. She looked strong and capable. We would pass or meet them about the time we all got to the mailbox in front of the house. They laughed audibly and as we got closer; I could hear bits of singing. I did not know the song.

We all stopped by the mailbox. The man said, “we are Felicity and Evan and child. Are you Doug Simpson?”

Link to the whole deal: In the tenth year of the pandemonium.docx