The Armageddon Effect

  THE

  ARMAGEDDON EFFECT

  By Ric Dawson

  ***

  THE ARMAGEDDON EFFECT

  Ric Dawson

  Copyright 2017

  ***

  This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This eBook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please go and buy your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author. This is a work of fiction. Any similarities to real persons, events, or places are purely coincidental; any references to actual places, people, or brands are fictitious. All rights reserved.

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  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  To my readers, thank you. I hope your experience is rollercoaster wicked. I appreciate your support and hope you will come back again and again.

  To the many alpha and beta readers, Alina, Tom, Essa, and the wonderful writers at Inked Voices, I could not have done it without you. Thank you.

  To Mo and the great team at MHES, fantastic job, thank you.

  Finally, to the fabulous Ivo Brankovikj and his stunning artwork, many thanks.

  ***

  Edited by Monique Happy Editorial Services

  www.moniquehappy.com

  RESONANT TUNING

  Homeland Special Agent Jack Morgan frowned. The front page of the Denver Post read “Bakara Riots Continue – Militants Bathe in Blood.”

  The same disturbing symbol in dried blood in the background. One analyst had called it a broken sigil.

  The sound of hasty footsteps caused him to turn.

  “You gotta see this,” Homeland Agent Frank Halcomb said as he rushed into the office and turned the TV on.

  “You ever knock?”

  “Never. I brought coffee.”

  Jack took the offered cup as the big screen TV powered up. Frank adjusted a dial and the audio blared to life.

  “This is Stan Krash, Channel 9 News. We are ‘live’ at the Supreme Court where multiple gunshots just occurred. Joni, do you have the feed?

  “Y-yes Stan. I … S-so much blood …”

  Seconds rolled by as the camera panned overturned chairs. Arms and legs poked from under a blood-streaked table. Something white and sticky dripped from a nearby wall. The camera came to a stop on a headless body oozing gore over the table. The smeared words – They Are Here – were visible under outstretched fingers.

  “Flaming Jesus! Get that damn reporter out of there,” Jack roared at the TV.

  “Unbelievable. How did he get past security?” Frank mused.

  “More important is where did the shooter get the weapon?” Jack said.

  “Security guard. They found him in the basement. Electrocuted himself with a coat hanger. Eye’s blown out, the works.”

  The TV went blank and a pastoral scene of green pastures and the American flag accompanied notes from the National Anthem.

  “Looks like we’ve lost the feed of the crime scene. Our national correspondent, Burke Slitzer, is with us via satellite. Burke?

  “Thanks, Stan. This incident follows the same pattern we’ve seen over the past few months. As you know, there’s been a surge in mass murders of government officials worldwide. Here is a map showing each incident,” Burke said.

  “It looks like they are random,” Stan said.

  “Well. Yes. They occur around the world, but the crime scenes are similar.”

  “How many does that make this month?” Stan asked.

  “Over a hundred dead. That doesn’t count three downed planes, a runaway hyper-train, and that flipped cruise ship.”

  Jack turned to Frank. “Mass hysteria?” he asked.

  “Same phrase on the table as the others along with the usual gibberish about woken gods and salvation,” Frank said as he leaned against the wall.

  “Maybe we should call Mulder,” Jack said deadpan.

  # # #

  Lane

  Two oily teardrops streaked overhead like military jets on patrol. A wave of impressions followed them. Malignant. Feral. An ancient memory stirred, evil and familiar. I stepped into the shadow of the blurred trees. There was nowhere to run. The apparitions swung around for another pass. In moments, they were gone. The vision faded, and the forest reappeared. Cemetery plaques lay half-buried in the snow on all sides. My hands trembled.

  It’s just the November chill.

  The visions rattled me and they were becoming more frequent. Overlapped picture frames, one a nebulous landscape, wrestled with the other, a pine-cloaked hillside in the mountains. What did it all mean?

  It had started with night terrors. Fear would grip me and sweat drench my hair. Eyes tight shut. When I opened them, gaunt skeletons stared at me from the foot of my bed.

  I could not move. Tortured faces and wracked bodies accompanied screams of hysterical laughter and choking death.

  A cloaked figure stood in the background. Always watching me.

  Irresistible power lured me closer. Whispers echoed in my mind. Conquer. Control. Feed.

  The terrors progressed into dream paralysis. A state, I’m told, where the body remains in its dream state, but the mind is awake. I trusted no one, not even myself.

  Maybe this is how insanity feels.

  Cold mist clung to the trees. Running a hand through damp hair, I rubbed the back of my neck. Where was the gravesite marker?

  Treaded mountain boots grabbed frosted mud. I slid a few inches down the snow-crusted slope. Orderly rows of small plates wound their way around the alluvium mountainside.

  Just relax.

  Terror-drenched dreams were old foes and had tormented my sleep since Mom passed. But the visions, in broad daylight, launched stress and dread to new levels. Therapists never helped. They did nothing to alleviate the dreams, out-of-body experiences, whatever they were. Breathing, exercise, and a fearless acceptance to face the horror kept me functional.

  Cold rational thought replaced fear. Coding became my anchor. Logical, linear, it didn’t deviate into chaos like my mind did. I was, for the first time in my life, in control. When that failed, I prayed to angels and waited till the terror passed.

  Something cried in my soul. Tears soaked haunted memories that weren’t my own. So many bodies. I pushed the pain deep down.

  The memories are not real, Lane. Dreams. Subconscious ramblings.

  But with baffling certainty, I knew they were true.

  I closed moist eyes and my soul breathed in the weak afternoon sunshine.

  Focus.

  A tear evaporated on my cheek. I rolled my neck and shoulders.

  My friend. Where had he gone? He wasn’t in that pale, surreal body in the coffin, nor in the cremation urn later.

  There it was.

  On the right, freshly disturbed soil marked a bronze-colored plate. I walked over to the spot, looked at his gravesite and frowned.

  Is there any purpose to life at all?

  Steve struggled to do good in the world, but the final prize? Death. Now buried in a small plot in the pines on a snow-dusted hill in Colorado, his life only dim echoes of memory.

  We had connected, like brothers in another life, another time. I’d miss him.

  My gloom deepened. I laid the gift next to the plate. A painted pewter figurine of a paladin with golden shield and silver sword ready to strike. Over the years, we had often played paladins in our weekly gaming sessions.

  “Goodbye, Steve, you cockroach,” I whispered fondly.

  The funeral had been a week earlier. What is it about a dead body? Especially someone close to you, that seemed so alien? I’d never see
n death that close before. A grim contradiction to the experiences we shared. Laying there, dried taut skin, emaciated with fluid loss, pumped up with embalming chemicals. It was only an illusion of someone you loved. There was nothing there, just some bones and skin in a pressed, formaldehyde-scented business suit.

  With a sigh, I wandered back up the hillside.

  I hadn’t made the drive out to my friend’s grave until today. I told myself it was because of work, but it was the disturbing out-of-body experience earlier in the week.

  A cold shiver tensed my neck as a sudden breeze rippled through the trees. The question was still in my mind. Were ghosts in out-of-body experiences? Was it dreams, some new night terror, or was I someplace else, sometime else?

  The path crested and angled down a blue-stem-covered slope. Loose stone and rock slid underfoot as I tramped towards a small parking lot and my car. It was a beater, an old dented Cadillac DeVille. It leaked oil in a constant rain on the pavement. The grimy spots always reminded me where I had parked. But the ride was smooth, and the engine could rustle up some power when needed. It was one of the few things I had from Dad, so I drove it and kept it running.

  Cool air whipped in the car window on the ride back to town. The fresh mountain bouquet of pine oil and blossoms was a comfort.

  The roads were clear and the sun was still behind me when I got to the Waldo Canyon gorge. Out over the plains, the lights of the city were just beginning to wink on in the gathering dusk.

  To my right, Pikes Peak cast its towering shadow over the city like an ancient sentinel guarding a long-forgotten mystery. Plunging into the gorge, the monstrous shadow of the peak engulfed the last beams of light reflected off distant buildings. It was eerie the way it turned chill so quickly.

  I pulled into the driveway of my tri-level house in Colorado Springs and the car settled over the dark-stained pavement. I rarely parked in the garage. A mountain of books piled there over the years and the Harley took the rest of the space. The spacious house perched on a rocky hillside. In the distance, just beyond the edge of the ridge, was the city skyline. Once inside, I topped off the cat’s food dish, grabbed a glass of juice and a sandwich, then headed down a white-carpeted stair to the computer room.

  “Meowww.” Phats looked up. He was sacked out over the top of the faux leather couch like a long, fluffy doily. His brother, Monk, stretched on the fireplace’s oak mantel and smugly surveyed his domain.

  “Hey, guys. Yes. I filled your dishes.”

  I climbed into the overstuffed chair at my computer desk. Phats jumped into my lap.

  “Oww, easy on the claws.” He purred to the gentle pressure of my knuckles.

  The new training DVD poked out the front of the disc player and with a push slid back into play mode. I looked at Phats. “You think those nightmare things will be there?” He just looked at me with his big round eyes.

  The resonant brain wave tones pulsed into my ears. Stress faded away as muscles relaxed. I’d picked up the new compact disc two weeks earlier. It was the latest edition in a series I’d listened to for years. The tones allowed listeners to enter a meditative or out-of-body state, also known as “OBE.” The OBE obsession strengthened my mind, but more than that, something pulled me, something “out there.” It always had.

  Since childhood, I’d had dreams I could float. But there was always something about them that was more than a dream, a consistency that was tangible. They started the same way. Lifting off of the ground, I would hold out my hands, sometimes spreading a pillow case like a spinnaker sail, and wind would take me up. I hovered around my neighborhood but never went anywhere. Everything was gray and without sound. It was much later that I realized they were OBEs.

  The out-of-body experiences had changed. There were flickers of color in them; then the visions started. Maybe it was due to the new disc. The new experiences felt real and they kept getting stronger, like I was adjusting or learning.

  Six days ago, the OBE began the way they always had. I floated outside my house a few feet above a dim streetlight, when without warning, I accelerated upward. The Earth dropped away and the ground faded into a gray, patchwork blur, like looking out the window of an airplane. Shock turned to numbing terror.

  I began a sloping descent and the panic eased. Serenity and wonder replaced terror. Fog shrouded the ground ahead. When the fog shifted, I saw a row of dark foothills. A lone hill stood out, closer than the others.

  A twilight shimmer of dancing lights illuminated the hilltop. Like white-frosted fireflies, they left long streaks as they whipped and swirled around, slipping in and out of shadows. Something wasn’t right. Dread clouded my mind like a deathly vapor, old and decayed.

  It’s a cemetery.

  The fireflies grew into larger puffs of dancing mists. Behind the lights, I felt something dark and hideous, hidden. That ancient horror stirred, and the fireflies became frantic. One puff separated from the rest, wavering towards me. I couldn’t breathe. Ghosts.

  In a flash, I woke trembling; the faint odor of Old Spice lingered in the air. Steve? It took a long time to steady my heart down from its frantic thumping.

  I had struggled to find something to explain the experience. Was it a warning? What caused it?

  Out-of-body experiences frightened me, but were thrilling, like skydiving. All adrenaline. But it was more than just thrills. The obsession was strong and unfaded. Instinctual. I was drawn to them, as if they held answers to questions yet to be asked. But this latest OBE had been so different, so strange. Could the tones be the reason?

  Controlled breathing always helped the nervousness. Slow, even breaths mentally prepared my mind to go into the astral again. As I leaned back in the chair, Phats’ purr mingled with the cadence.

  I listened as monk-like chants surrounded a slow beat hidden in the sound. The soothing resonances took me through the relaxation steps. Breathing slowed with each transition state, closer to out-of-body release. My mind quieted down and calm replaced glum as I absorbed the resonance hum. My stomach twisted with disorientation and mild vertigo.

  Thoughts of graves, visions, and Steve slowly faded to echoes. A tranquil drone replaced mental chatter as my shoulders sank into the soft chair, deeper, deeper, and deeper. My mind felt suspended in air.

  A soothing voice in the headphones said the astral state was attained and invited me to stretch and float. Somewhere in my mind, I agreed. The strange drone rose to a higher pitch. I was floating.

  Whoa, that was fast.

  It felt like going up the on-ramp on a highway. Then, you’re out in traffic cruising along at high speed with the other cars. My internal vibration shifted to a higher level, a harmonic at a higher frequency.

  Below me, I could see a broad-shouldered guy in blue jeans and a white tee-shirt. He was leaning back in a chair with cowboy boots resting on a desk. With a start, I realized it was me. Phats looked up, right at me, as he stretched out a paw and yawned.

  Phats sees me.

  Floating near the ceiling, I felt lighter, unfettered by worldly substance, free and vulnerable. Something caught my eye. The dragon amulet. It was carved from red onyx, and about the size of an old silver dollar. I’d purchased the medallion at a yard sale several weeks back. The dragon looked Chinese, but not as long of body as those found in ancient Chinese drawings. The dragon glowed a spectral red; its eyes shown brightest. It was eerie. I chuckled.

  I’m floating on the ceiling and a glowing medallion of a crouching dragon seems odd.

  In dreams, I used my arms to float higher, spreading them more for altitude or bringing them together to float down. But, that had been in dreams, I knew this wasn’t a dream. I was here and my body was there below me. The thrill of floating overcame my nervousness and apprehension. I spread my arms and willed myself higher.

  I passed through the wall facing the hillside. The wall shimmered, but the ground floor window was dark and foreboding. Instinct said not to go through the glass window, nor use the door. I had no idea
why. I had never experienced having that option before.

  Years of puzzling over software code had given me an analytical mind. I tried to process the baffling events around me. Why was this so different than previous OBEs? The experience was stronger; subtle shadows became objects as rocks and bushes took shape on the ethereal hillside.

  Shifting twilight bathed the landscape. Trees had a whitish luminance, while the rocky soil was dark. I could see details of the hillside and house by zooming my view. I just had to think it. I floated up a few feet above the house. A giant current of sparkling colored lights rotated high above downtown. A few meters away, colored streamers moved much slower. My thoughts filled with chatter like white noise on a radio. Then voices, images, and symbols emerged from the noise, faint and disturbing.

  I reached out to one of the light streams. Turquoise streamers flowed between my outstretched fingers like viscous syrup. Something stirred in my mind. With a shock, I realized the lights and streamers were thoughts. A subtle tingle of belonging and serenity entered my mind. I felt righteous, correct, and truthful. –

  The thoughts are affecting me.

  –Believe, you must believe, you will believe– someone whispered.

  The thought was insistent, threatening.

  Adrenaline rushed up my neck. Pleasure.

  –Love me–

  A breathless woman moaned.

  –They must die, be pure, punish all others except the chosen.–

  Obedient. Intolerant.

  I jerked my hand from the glowing rivulet. It was like listening to a radio jacked into a hundred channels, all at the same time.

  I opened my arms wider. My body floated up, gaining altitude above the house, twenty or thirty more feet. Still I was well below the rising hilltops around me. I noticed more detail in the twilight landscape. Colors became stronger. Blue-gray rocks and boulders littered the hillsides, reflecting the clouds above. Nearby houses glowed a pale gold, warm and inviting.