The Rapture Dialogues: Dark Dimension (The Second Coming Chronicles Book 1) Read online

  The tears came again, and he kissed them away.

  “Lori, I do love you,” he said.

  Chapter 6

  Christopher Banyon tossed fitfully. Lightning illuminated the bedroom, each flash followed by crashing thunder that rattled the window near his bed.

  He sat up in the bed and swung his legs and feet over the side. He lifted the blind after moving the curtain to one side. Rain blew hard against the window, and when the skies flickered, he strained to see the street just down the slope that was the side portion of his yard. Swift water, a foot above the curb gushed down the street.

  Banyon turned the little knob of the lamp sitting atop the nightstand. Nothing…

  He went from the bed to the wall switch and flipped it up. The result was the same.

  The young pastor started to go through the bedroom doorway, catching the little toe of his right foot on the thin leg of the chair sitting against the wall. He cursed, stopped to bow his head, more from the pain and to catch the breath the pain took from him than to seek forgiveness.

  “Forgive me, Lord,” he nonetheless said beneath his breath before limping farther into the darkness.

  He thought to phone Susie but realized that he should first check the time. He looked at the electric clock on the living room wall, able to read it when the lightning lit the room.

  “2:15,” he said.

  He felt his way along the sofa to one of the end tables and fumbled to find his wallet and wristwatch. He held the watch’s face close to his eyes and turned it so he could see the hands when next the lightning flashed.

  “3:10,” he told himself. The electricity had been out for--he figured in his head--almost an hour. That was close enough.

  Susie, like him, was living alone for the time being. She would be frightened--should have called him by now. Why hadn’t she, he wondered, feeling his way toward the phone that sat in the little hallway’s alcove.

  He took the receiver from its cradle. The line was dead. He hit the buttons several times with his index finger, trying to get a dial tone.

  “Well, that’s why she hasn’t called,” he thought out loud, replacing the phone’s receiver.

  He wished they were already married. If they were married now, like he had wanted in the first place, she wouldn’t be alone in her apartment, across town. She wouldn’t have to lie frightened in her bed, her lights most likely out, unable to call him. He wouldn’t have to be alone, worrying about her in this storm…

  Instead, theirs would be a June wedding so both their parents and other relatives and their friends could arrange to attend.

  The house, no matter how well furnished, was empty without Susie. The house the ladies at St. Paul’s Church had fixed up for them. The parsonage they would share in just a few days…

  The whole house suddenly flashed with light. The very air surrounding him seemed to explode at the same time with a tremendous clap of thunder.

  Something nearby had been struck, and he hurried over to the big picture window. When he pulled the cord of the heavy draperies, all was dark, except for brief episodes of lightning that lit the storm-driven rain and trees just outside the front window.

  A sudden chill began somewhere at the top of his spine and descended rapidly throughout his body. He started to pull the other cord to close the draperies.

  He had to blink to make sure he wasn’t imagining what he thought he saw. There. Near the largest of the trees. A black, human-like form, outlined in a thin, glowing light, looked to be facing the window--and him!

  A terrible human-like figure--large, dark and looming--began to walk toward him. It’s head--yes, there was a head on the form! Red, flaming eyes glaring! The fiery eyes raged at him while it walked through the rain. The body, the arms, the legs seemed to emit faint sparks of electricity while it stalked him, getting larger. Getting ever larger!

  He wanted to scream but couldn’t. He could only watch and think frantic thoughts.

  “My God! Help me, oh, Lord!”

  The gigantic form of a nightmare trudging toward the picture window--was it a nightmare? From his childhood? After watching a horror show in some afternoon matinee?

  No! The beast was real, and it was coming for him!

  From out of nothingness within the lightning-illuminated blackness just outside the picture window, another figure, blazing with light, appeared and locked in what looked to be hand-to-hand fighting with the dark, menacing form. The lightning grew more horrific, the thunder deafening and earth shaking while the two combatants locked in immortal combat.

  Christopher averted his eyes from the brilliance of the conflict that generated light more dazzling than the lightning. When he next looked, the battling forms were gone. He saw only the trees, the rain, the shimmering occasional lightning.

  He jumped when the telephone in the hall rang. He pulled the draperies shut and made his way toward the phone while the storm continued to rage.

  Any diversion from the terrifying thing he had seen--or had imagined he had seen--was welcome at this moment. Yes. He had just imagined it.

  At least the phone was back in service, he thought, reaching to pick up the receiver.

  “Hello?”

  The line seemed as dead as before.

  “Hello…”

  Dead. Probably trying to reconnect it, get it working.

  Banyon started to hang the receiver on its cradle but hesitated when he thought he heard a voice.

  He pressed the receiver hard against his ear, hearing only a tin-echoing static. Then, the static dissipated.

  “Christopher--”

  The voice was a whisper, sounded as if it were a human whisper blowing through the line.

  “Christopher…” the wind-like voice repeated. Banyon started to respond, but the words wouldn’t come.

  “As in the days of Noah, so it shall be. Watchman watch. Therefore, watch for the bene elohim…”

  The voice grew louder, like a rushing wind, and trailed off.

  “Watch for the bene elohim…” the voice repeated just before the line went dead.

  The second lieutenant saluted when Capt. Mark Lansing approached.

  Mark returned the salute, wondering if the door out of which the lieutenant had exited the huge, stucco-facaded building was the one he needed.

  He stopped and turned to call after the young officer who wore a flight suit.

  “Lieutenant!”

  “Yes, sir?” the pilot in training said, walking quickly back the few paces.

  “Is this the Advanced Simulator Facility?” Mark questioned, gesturing toward the building.

  “Yes, sir. Through the door, to the right, then to the left down the long hallway. You can’t miss it.”

  “Thanks.”

  Half a minute later, Mark saw the sign jutting from above the double doors along the right wall of the hallway.

  “Flight Simulation Operations” the sign read in white letters etched in a black background.

  He walked to a gray metal desk where a WAF, gold bars on the collar of her blue uniform dress, was sitting.

  “Lieutenant...” Mark looked at the nametag above her right breast pocket, “…Simmons,” he said, once she had gotten off the phone.

  “Yes, sir?”

  “I’m to do some ILS, Weather Weapons Systems upgrade training this week.”

  She looked at his nametag, but he said, “Lansing, Mark.”

  He started to give his service number, but she read it to him, instead.

  “Yes. That’s me,” he said with a smile.

  “Sir. You have been re-routed,” the young, black lieutenant said.

  “Re-routed? What, exactly, does that mean?”

  “You’re wanted on the flight line, sir,” she said, standing and fingering through a number of stacked papers.

  “Yes. Here are your orders,” she said, handing him several pieces of the white pages, and keeping several for her files.

  “What’s this about?” he asked, flipping
the pages, seeing that, indeed, his orders for TDY status had been changed.

  “Sorry, Captain, sir. I really can’t help you.”

  “Yeah,” he said, still thumbing through the pages. “Well, thanks.”

  “You are to report to Lt. Col. Gerald Lazenby. His office is right through there,” she said, pointing to a door against a nearby wall.

  Momentarily he stood outside an office marked “Lt. Colonel Gerald B. Lazenby” on the frosted windowpane that was the top half of the door.

  The lieutenant colonel met him at the door as he turned the knob and opened it.

  “Just who are you, Captain?” the lanky officer asked with a curious tilt to his question.

  Mark said nothing, watching the officer pick his blue cap with the silver leaf stuck to its side from the desktop.

  “You must be somebody,” Lazenby said, walking in front of Mark and starting down the hallway.

  “Come on, Captain,” the man said, putting on the cap as they reached the side door.

  Mark thought they were going to go to the Air Force sedan sitting in the spot marked with the lieutenant colonel’s name.

  “I can’t wait to see what this is all about,” Lazenby said, striding quickly past the sedan, walking on the sidewalk that led down the side of the massive hangar building that had long ago been converted to a flight training facility.

  “You got your orders, Captain?” Lazenby asked.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “You’ll need ‘em,” he said, stepping up his pace.

  Mark had to strain to keep up with the older, longer-legged man. They were making a beeline for the Base Ops a hundred yards or so north of the training facility.

  “What’s this about, Colonel?” Mark said, pulling alongside the long-striding officer.

  “You got me, Captain. All I know is they told me to deliver you personally to the Secret Service at Base Ops.”

  “Secret Service?”

  “Yep. Said have you there no later than 8:10. We’ll make it with time to spare,” the lieutenant colonel said, his voice indicating a lighter mood than before.

  “You’re an F-4 pilot. I haven’t had time to look over your record. You spent any time over ‘Nam?”

  “A little…”

  “Wonder what the blazes they want with a Marine F-4 pilot. You got a relative in Congress?”

  “No, sir. No relatives that I know of.”

  “And you haven’t any idea what this is about?”

  “No, sir. Not a clue,” Mark said.

  “Well, the training they’ve pulled you from is considered the top priority, once assigned. At least this is the first case I’ve seen that’s taken a combat pilot off the training docket once it’s set.”

  The late May morning was unusually warm and muggy after the heavy rain the night before, and Mark found himself breaking a sweat by the time they reached the red-carpeted front portico of Base Ops. He followed the lieutenant colonel through the front double doors, like Lazenby, pulling his tan USMC cap from his head as he entered. The cold air of the air-conditioning felt good, but quickly turned uncomfortable because of the sweat-soaked T-shirt between the uniform shirt and his body.

  Mark glanced at the big, round, white-faced military clock on the cream-colored wall of the lobby.

  08:02 he thought.

  He stood by while Lazenby spoke to the first lieutenant behind the long, mahogany countertop that partitioned the lobby area from his recessed office.

  The lobby was filling with people. Mark recognized them as members of the Washington press corps. Something was up--involving the President.

  Gerald Lazenby, having finished his business with the first lieutenant behind the counter, came to Mark. He glanced around the large room, which had become more populous since he began his conversation with the Base Ops officer.

  “According to the lieutenant, the Presidential party will be leaving earlier than they thought. Wasn’t supposed to leave until fifteen hundred hours.”

  “Wonder what’s up,” Mark said, seeing a large party of the press corps come through the double doors.

  “Nothing surprises me anymore when the man is in the vicinity,” Lazenby said, watching three men in dark suits approaching, having just emerged from somewhere within the Base Ops interior.

  “Capt. Mark Lansing?” one of the young men said, pulling his identification from inside his suitcoat.

  “Yes, sir, I’m Capt. Lansing,” Mark said, glancing at the I.D. the Secret Service agent presented.

  “Thank you, Colonel, for bringing the Captain,” the agent said. “We can handle it from here.”

  The man introduced the other agents by name. Then, addressing Lazenby, he said, “We’ve been instructed to escort Capt. Lansing to the President’s plane.”

  The lieutenant colonel reluctantly left, when he realized this would be the extent of what he would be told about the strange change of orders for Capt. Lansing.

  A flush of puzzlement overcame Mark’s thoughts: The President’s plane?

  All he could think of was that it had something to do with the strange whatever it was night before last. Had something to do with his father, or whomever, or whatever had talked to him.

  The things the dark vision being told him that night quickly ran through his mind.

  “We, you and I, and a few others have been chosen,” he recalled the voice saying in what must have been Hebrew.

  “You will be contacted, son. You must do what they ask,” the voice had instructed in the unknown language, but he had understood perfectly in English.

  “This is reality, Mark,” the thing that said it was his father had told him. “It is not a dream. You will know. It will be validated when the time is right.”

  The words echoed again in his head. The words the dream-creature, or vision-being or whatever it was, had said, “You will be contacted, son. You must do what they ask.”

  “We need to get to the flight line, Captain,” the agent who seemed the one chosen to talk, said. “Let’s go this way,” he said, motioning with toward the doorway at the side of the first lieutenant’s open office, the doorway through which the agents had entered the Base Ops lobby.

  Moments later they exited a side door into the bright morning light. They walked quickly, Mark flanked by the young Treasury men. Other Secret Service agents, holding walkie-talkies, watched the four men from their various vantage points, some of them talking into the devices.

  Mark scanned the hangar rooftops. The Air Police were there, scoped rifles at the ready.

  “What’s this about, guys?” Mark said trying to sound nonplused.

  “It won’t be long, Capt. Lansing. You will know all about it,” the agent who had done all the talking said while they traversed the white concrete of the flight line toward the President’s gleaming 707.

  Mark watched the aircraft grow larger while they walked. The same plane--26000--had flown President John F. Kennedy from Fort Worth to Dallas November 22, 1963, then flew his dead body back to Washington that same evening. The very airplane--he remembered now, approaching to within 70 feet of its rearmost portion--in which then-Vice President Lyndon Johnson had taken the presidential oath of office before leaving Dallas’ Love Field.

  The walkie-talkie held by one of the men at Mark’s side squawked, and the agent spoke into it in what was obvious code-language. The agent listened and responded.

  “The man is about to land,” he said to the other agents.

  “We’ll wait here, Captain,” the man who seemed to be in charge said.

  All eyes watched the horizon at the north end of the runway. Their wait was not long. The Presidential Jetstar flared before settling just as smoothly as it had 26000 on Friday, when Mark had watched it land.

  They watched while the JetStar’s thrust-reversers slowed the plane for its landing roll-out, then its right turn onto the taxiway immediately adjacent to the runway. All four men caught a glimpse of an Air Force sedan pull to within 20 feet of them o
n their right.

  An Air Force tech sergeant in dress blues got out of the driver’s side, while an officer got out of the other side of the front seat. Each of the men opened the back doors of the vehicle.

  Two men emerged from the rear seat. Mark recognized them as Lt. Gen. Sam Maddox, Commander of Air Training Command, and Brig. Gen. Frank Matson, Commanding Officer of Randolph Air Force Base.

  He anxiously wondered what he was doing here, standing between Secret Service agents, in the same company as commanding generals, and soon, the President of the United States.

  The small Presidential jet taxied quickly, its pilot wasting no time in delivering the commander-in-chief to within 50 feet of Air Force 26000, whose engines began whirring as the noisy plush units fed them forced air. The plane would be ready to move out instantly when the President gave the order.

  “Let’s move to the aircraft,” the agent in charge said, nudging Mark’s arm to start him moving toward the rear stairway leading upward to the back door of the 707.

  The agents, when they had gotten their man where they wanted him to be, stood stiffly, looking around the area. They occasionally looked in the direction of the Presidential party, which had disembarked.

  The President was easy to spot. Dressed in a golden-tan sports jacket and light tan trousers, his silver-haired head towered above others in the party.

  Mark watched as several other people joined the generals in a line near the aircraft that had brought the President from Bergstrom Air Force Base.

  Surrounded by a contingent of Secret Service agents and followed by several people who had accompanied him to Randolph, the President moved slowly along the line of greeters, stopping to chat briefly with each person. He patted Gen. Maddox on his right shoulder, after returning the general’s salute, walked a few feet past him, then returned to whisper a few words in his ear. Both men laughed heartily.

  Probably a dirty joke, Mark thought, standing at semi parade-rest near the bottom of the stairway-ramp to Air Force One.

  Mark thought it odd that there weren’t more people around the big aircraft. Just himself and the agents, who spread out a bit, leaving Mark standing alone, feeling miniscule amidst the Presidential atmospherics.