- Working at KSC
- NASA Old Headquarters building on KSC destroyed.
- Flintknapping points
- Vampires of Kennedy Space Center and the O&C
- Demons of Kennedy Space Center
- Demons of Kennedy Space Center, corpus callosotomy
- Ghosts of Kennedy Space Center, End of Spiders
- Dreams of Kennedy Space Center, lovers and pyramids.
- Witches of Kennedy Space Center
- Cave Bears of Kennedy Space Center
- Aliens of Kennedy Space Center, uninvited guests
- Remembering Kennedy Space Center
- Lake 33 Killing Relic
Ghosts of Lake 33.
A Weldon Spring Story.
Chapter Two: Fifteen minutes late
Welcome!
A new Book in first stages of writing.
The following pages and chapters are first drafts, including typos, grammar and tense problems.
Take it for what it is, A WORK IN PROGRESS.
.....And....Since I am by nature, a discovery writer, the story could change 100% (Have to get the ideas it out of your head and onto the monitor before it can be improved, fixed or corrected. Or thrown in the trash can via the delete button.
NO, not the book cover, just me playing around with graveyards
Chapter Two
Late
Fifteen minutes late, and I slammed on the brakes to slide to a gravel-slinging halt at the bunker.
If she had a bad trip…The bunker blast door opened silently, allowing afternoon light into the the tomb like bunker to illuminate Natasha laying in a fetal position on her air mattress.
“Natasha?”
Stale air greeted me and my footsteps echoed through the empty bunker as I stepped inside and gently shook her. She never came out of her trip quickly; it was as if she had to swim up from a fathomless depth where dreams held her tight.
“Natasha come on back.”
She answered in another language. Dutch or German?
She muttered a few sentences and opened her eyes. Her normal hazel eyes, at least they were not a different color like the last few times. Had to be a trick of the light, and her coming out of that obsidian darkness where she journeyed. The one time her eyes were kaleidoscope multi-colors, as though they had briefly borrowed patterns from somewhere else.
I helped her sit up.
“Reeb?”
She looked at me and put a hand out as if to verify I was solid and real.
As before, she was not very talkative, as if she had to relearn how to speak. She looked at me and spoke words from another language. Had to be German, the class I failed in high school.
“Reeb, did the farmers who owned this land that Roosevelt took from them—did they speak German?”
“I don’t know. But certainly almost every farmer in this area has a German surname, with a few Irish names. The area went to hell when they let the Irish in. Who let the Irish into the country?”
Damn. One of my favorite jokes and Natasha did not blink an eye. Maybe you ought to lay off the acid if you are going to continue to fly for the airlines.
“Natasha, are you okay?”
“I need to pee.”
In the dazzling sunlight, her eyes squinting I waited to see that trick of the sunlight-her eyes a different color or even kaleidoscope eyes. A trick of the sunlight instead of the normal hazel it’s yellows and oranges and pinks red. Except, the darker color, the more dangerous the entity in her imaginary stories-acid trips.
I handed her a cup of Baileys and warm coffee and she did not say anything. She looked at me like I was going to fade away like dust motes.
I don’t know what the shit is that your taking, but it’s way too potent way too powerful. “How the hell do you fly a jet?” I asked her once.
“It’s a different part of my brain that flies a plane This acid is for my third eye. My pilot brain sees the normal world.”
“What did you see this time?” I asked. “Germans? The Wolf Shaman? The Bison man?”
Babysitting your cave is easy money, but I’m not taking one of your flights, I thought.
“What’s this?” Natasha asked, settling herself on the tailgate. Her aviator’s training engaged immediately, allowing her to comprehend all the markers and distances between items on the weathered paper. “Four caves,” she noted with clinical precision.
“Give me that, please,” I requested, though we both knew there was no disputing its origin as a map drawn by someone intimately familar with Dardenne Creek.
Even with the lingering effects of the drug clouding her thoughts, her questions emerged with surprising clarity.
“Lake 33 is missing? And look, the old bridge is across Dardenne Creek. You told it washed away in the flood of 92 or 94? Four caves on a map and three of them are crossed out,” she observed, stretching carefully. “My back is killing me. I’m going to invest in a better air mattress for next time.”
Almost casually, she added, “One of those caves is marked in a different handwriting ‘DOE’ Wasn’t there something bad in that particular cave?”
“I don’t really know,” I replied. “I never went inside after seeing how my friend died of the radiation exposure from material stored in that cave. Not a good or fast death. The paper claims the DOE moved all the radioactive stuff out to a Nevada salt mine and sealed up the Dardenne cave. The bad stuff would have gone under the Weldon Spring dome, but the cave was found after the dome was complete.
“You never went in? I thought you had,” she said, her eyebrows drawing together in concentration. “Maybe I dreamed you entered the cave?"
Natasha pointed at the other caves marked with an X. What about these? You explored them?”
I was surprised by her lucidity. Her eyes had returned to normal.
“Are you still experiencing effects?” I asked.
“Hard to say. I think so, but when you’re under the influence inside that bunker with all your senses deprived, it feels somewhat like your current reality is just a dream. Well, I certainly hope that’s not the case. That’s a path to madness, isn’t it? Living in a dream within a dream within a dream and you are ghost who cannot find the right reality.”
“Within a dream,” I echoed softly.
“About the marked out caves—yes, they were not so much as caves but shallow overhangs. One had a stained roof, suggesting Native Americans had stayed there occasionally, probably hunting parties. But no substantial enough for permanent habitation.”
Natasha could still hear the rhythms of the Wolf Shaman dancing.
“Do you hear that? asked Natasha, “No, it is only my pulse.”
I poured the last of the Baileys and coffee into her mug.
“You want me to ask about that last cave during my experiments? No, that seems foolish...” She paused. “No seriously, do You want me to ask that Wolf guide about the cave, the one you haven’t discovered yet? Or I could ask him about the cave sealed by the Department of Energy.”
“No, please don’t do that,” I said quickly. “I’ll admit something. For years, I had nightmares about something living in that cave. Like a demon or a witch doctor, or perhaps both. It terrified me, which is another reason I never ventured inside. It sounds irrational, I know.”
“Maybe I’ll consult my guide about it anyway,” she suggested. “Although I’m not particularly drawn to Native American spirituality.”
“What are you drawn to, then? Why the experiments? I asked.
"Not yet, but I promise I will explain. But I’m a damn good pilot and a better navigator,” she replied and returned studying my map.
Return to Chapter One of Ghosts of Lake 33.
Return HOME from Chapter Two of Ghosts of Lake 33
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