The Eye of Madness Read online

  The Eye of Madness

  The Tesla Gate Book 3

  John D. Mimms

  “Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there, wondering, fearing, doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before.”

  ~Edgar Allan Poe

  “… while the sons of the kingdom will be thrown into the outer darkness. In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.”

  ~Matthew 8:12

  “There are dark shadows on the earth, but its lights are stronger in the contrast.”

  ~Charles Dickens

  CHAPTER 1

  ENGLAND

  “No excellent soul is exempt from a mixture of madness.”

  ~Aristotle

  They found Lieutenant William Langford in the general area of his post, though not in the condition expected. He was at the end of a rope, five feet off the ground, and twisting in the chilly Scottish wind. As the eye of the cosmic storm encompassed the Earth last night, a cold front moved through Northern England causing a great deal of rain. The torrential downpour soaked the lieutenant to the bone. Not that it mattered, because he was dead.

  Someone pointed out that there was no mud on his shoes and no tracks below him. This suggested he was hanging and dead when the rain began. Why was it important? It was not, except for one small thing. The entire battalion had heard his screams last night after the rain started. It was soon after the Impals began to disappear all over the planet. They were not the screams of a depressed and suicidal person. They were of a man in tremendous physical and mental agony, or perhaps more accurately … terror.

  “I haven’t heard such screaming since I was a battlefield medic,” the base physician reported. “The cries of men with agonizing injuries did not compare to what I heard last night. At least those brave soldiers clung to some small degree of hope, a faint belief of my ability to perform a miracle and heal them. What I heard last night was pure agony, completely devoid of hope.”

  The Headquarters of the 1st Signal Brigade in Gloucester was the primary staging base for the relocation of Impals to the Channel Islands. It also funneled several refugees to a few secluded locations in Northern Scotland and Ireland. Almost two thousand Impals had resided here until last night when, what many are calling, the ‘eye’ of the cosmic storm arrived over the Earth. All Impals everywhere vanished and were replaced with something … well; no one knows what or who it is. It’s as if shadows gained consciousness, a sentient purpose with equal intelligence and malice.

  Lieutenant Langford was by himself last night, with only one small light under a wooden guard booth. The light still glowed in the morning sun, but the door to the small building was standing wide open. Like a good soldier, he had gone outside to investigate the strange noises in the dark. He paid for performing his duty with his life.

  The logistics of hanging oneself from a tree are not easy. The lieutenant was quite efficient with his impromptu suicide. The rope was three-quarter-inch braided natural Manila, standard military issue. It was easily strong enough to handle him; he weighed 170 pounds a month earlier at his annual physical.

  One end was tied to a lower branch of the same tree and secured with a slapdash mix of knots and lashings. The other end looped over a higher branch, two feet in girth and exactly twenty-one feet from the ground. From there it fell about nine feet, culminating in a perfect hangman’s knot. The noose was straight from the textbook with thirteen coils designed to collapse the loop under pressure. A true hangman’s knot snaps the neck, making death quicker and less painful. It appeared the lieutenant knew what he was doing. Other than what was apparent, there was no sign of a struggle. The cause of death was obvious due to the unnatural twist in his neck. The rope worked with its intended efficiency and death was quick. He did not strangle or suffer, at least not when his life ended.

  This was all a textbook hanging–suicide except for one small detail. There was no ladder, no chair, stool, stump or crate anywhere in the vicinity. No one could have carried them off without leaving footprints in the muddy ground beneath. So how did he get up there? It would have been difficult enough to strangle himself without some sort of step up. He would have to climb to get high enough to accomplish a fall with the required height and velocity to snap his neck. The mysterious lack of evidence was as disturbing as the poor soldier, swinging in the breeze like a ghastly piñata. His lifeless eyes stared at nothing. Their last terrible sight made them protrude from the sockets as if trying to abandon his skull and flee from the horror. Lieutenant Langford’s final countenance had been molded by the darkness, which now held terrible secrets.

  “What in the bloody Hell is going on?” Private Jack Abernathy asked his partner on guard duty. They watched from across the parade grounds as Langford’s body was cut down and carried to the waiting ambulance.

  “I dunno,” Private Sean Poindexter admitted. He removed his scarlet beret and ran his fingers through his short red hair. “It was damn creepy, wasn’t it?”

  Both men were of similar height and build and wore the standard issue British Army green camo. The scarlet beret on their heads and their matching armband identified them as Royal Military Police. They had been on guard duty in one of barracks housing Impals the previous evening when all of them vanished without a trace. They were fortunate they were not outside.

  “The noise … I’ll never forget that noise …” Private Abernathy said. “It was this damn humming. It was like wind blowing across an open pipe. No … or maybe an inhuman choir uttering the same openthroated syllable in unison, hhhhhhhhhhhh …”

  Private Poindexter shuddered. “I would say you gave it a pretty damn good description, mate … except for one thing. It wasn’t like any choir I’ve ever heard. It was more like a pit of snakes, all hissing in unison.”

  Private Abernathy did not respond, his was attention focused on the nearby woods. He stared into a dark area beyond the tree line. Private Poindexter turned to follow his gaze. At first he saw nothing, and then it hit him. The dark area in the woods was moving. It was not random movement of smoke or fog wafting in the wind, there seemed to be intelligence to it … a purpose. Chills ran up the spines of both men as they stood transfixed by what they saw in the woods. They had no idea what it was, but they did share one common certainty. Whatever it was, it was malicious.

  “That killed Langford,” Poindexter croaked. “He didn’t bloody kill himself. If he did, it made him do it,” he said, pointing a shaky finger.

  Private Abernathy nodded in agreement. There was nothing to say. Everybody thought the same thing, but no one wanted to say it aloud. It was crazy, right? Perhaps no more crazy than the souls of the dead materializing on Earth. Most people believed in the existence of the soul and held some concept of life after death. However, this … this darkness had no logical concept. It was an unknown, a horrible unknown, which made people as uncomfortable to speculate about it as it was to look at it. The darkness was intelligent, malignant, and calculating. It was a conglomeration of man’s most primal fears … the dark and the unknown. A plan of action would have to be determined before nightfall.

  “Do you think the Impals turned into that?” Private Poindexter asked, tearing his gaze away from the forest.

  “No, not from what I saw,” Private Abernathy said. “I can feel the bloody thing thinking as it watches us … if it makes any sense. It’s got an intelligence different from the Impals, it … it … well, it wants something.”

  “That makes sense … I feel the same way. Although I don’t know what the hell it is thinking or what it wants. I don’t think I want to know,” Private Poindexter said, knots twisting in his stomach. The potential scenarios played through his mind in a montage of snuff films. “Where do you think the
Impals are?” he asked, attempting to shake his mind of the macabre imagery.

  Abernathy shrugged. “Heaven, Valhalla, the great beyond … Neverland,” he said, recalling an Impal he befriended in the barracks, J.M. Barrie, the creator of Peter Pan. Barrie had kept everyone entertained in the barracks with his stories. He told Private Abernathy he chose to remain behind after he died because he refused to grow up and moving on was the ultimate form of growing up. “Someplace better than here, I hope,” he said, taking a quick glance back at the woods.

  A short time later, the order came down from the base commander. All electrical systems from transformers and generators to wiring and light bulbs should be inspected. Any necessary maintenance would be completed by sunset. Every light must be available at dusk. The base was also tasked with stocking up on fuel, light bulbs, extra generators and as many Powermoon portable lights as could be requisitioned. These powerful lights were utilized a great deal by mining operations and road construction crews doing night work. A handful of these powerful lights could illuminate most of the base like a sports stadium.

  “I got the call from the surviving government in London,” the base commander said. “We need to prepare for an influx of refugees. Any persons who do not have adequate lighting in their residence should go to military bases or designated facilities in London, Liverpool, Gloucester and Edinburgh. It is not a mandatory relocation, but people would be bloody fools if they do not comply.”

  Lieutenant Langford was not the only victim: there had been tens of thousands. Not all were fatal, some survived their encounter with the shadows, but mentally and emotionally, death may have been preferable. No one who survived was able to articulate their experience, at least not with any coherence. Whatever they experienced threw them into such shock, social interaction was impossible.

  “We’re going to need a lot more food,” Private Poindexter remarked as they walked back to the mess hall. “The Impals had an appetite, but not like flesh and blood people. I would guess we are going to have a lot more than two thousand,” he said, pointing at the line of people filing in through the base’s main gate.

  “Shite,” Abernathy said. “We better let the mess officer know he’s got some shopping to do.”

  Poindexter halted with disgust on his face.

  “What is it?” Abernathy asked.

  “We’re not going to have enough latrines,” he said. “It was easy enough with just a bunch of buckets for the Impals, but …” he trailed off and Private Abernathy finished for him.

  “The task is going to fall on us,” he said with a grimace.

  Abernathy turned to watch the people stream in. Memories of digging and maintaining latrines in basic training resurfaced in his mind. He thought his head might explode when he saw the multitudes pouring through the gates. There were four restrooms, each with five heads servicing the four barracks buildings. There were never more than a couple of hundred soldiers there at any one time. Tonight they would have thousands of people. He hurried to his commanding officer to discuss the possibility of acquiring several portaloos.

  Poindexter stopped to watch as his partner dashed towards the officer’s quarters. The people filed up the road about forty yards from the forest. It was now close to noon and the sun was a great deal higher in the sky, causing the shadows in the forest to grow and elongate. The darkness in the woods had grown. It seemed to writhe like a wild animal trying to escape its tether. It was now bigger, yes, but it was more than that. The people excited it, to energize it similar to a shark smelling blood in the water. The daylight outside the woods was the only thing keeping this horror at bay.

  The next six hours would be crucial in getting everyone settled and the lighting in place. Otherwise, when the sun went down, there would be nothing left to keep it away. The regions of the world now in daylight hours raced against the clock to do as much as possible to protect themselves from the dark. The unfortunate areas of the globe where it was now night could only hang on and endure until the sunrise.

  CHAPTER 2

  ISRAEL

  “Like a muddied spring or a polluted fountain is a righteous man who gives way before the wicked.”

  ~Proverbs 25:26

  Even though only two hours separate London and Jerusalem, the eye did not arrive two hours before or two hours after it came to England. It arrived about eight hours later. The eye spread over the planet erratically, taking a total of almost fourteen hours to envelope the entire world. For many, it was a blessing, especially where it was night.

  Malakhi Gavish lived in a small apartment in a lower middle class area in northern Jerusalem. Malakhi shared the small three room apartment with his mother and, as of late, his grandfather. His grandfather, who had owned a small restaurant in a nearby market, passed away before he was born.

  Nehemya Gavish had chosen to remain behind and not crossover ten years ago after suffering a fatal heart attack. He stayed because he felt it his duty to watch over his grandson. Rebekah, Malakhi’s mother, was six months pregnant with him when Nehemya died. Malakhi’s father had disappeared soon after he found out about Rebekah’s pregnancy. They never saw him again. In truth, Nehemya felt his daughter needed to be watched over almost as much Malakhi. She was just nineteen years old when her son was born.

  Malakhi and Nehemya were having breakfast together, as they had done so many times in the last couple of months.

  “Do you know what I enjoy most about breakfast?” Nehemya asked, giving his grandson a wink.

  “Blintzes and bagels?” Malakhi asked. Bagels were a staple in the Gavish home, but Malakhi didn’t care for them unless they were slathered with cream cheese and lox. However, they reserved these treats to special occasions because of their shoestring budget. Rebekah Gavin earned a meager living as a waitress in the restaurant formerly owned by her father. The new owners were not generous with their employees.

  “No …” Nehemya laughed and patted his grandson’s head with a cold hand characteristic of Impals. Malakhi had gotten so used to this interaction he didn’t notice the chill anymore. He was just glad to have his granddad here. “The thing I like best about breakfast is getting to share it with my handsome grandson!”

  Malakhi giggled as Nehemya reached down and gave him a cold poke in the belly. He flashed a sly grin and then handed him a bagel he had been concealing under the table. A generous portion of cream cheese and lox topped it.

  “Where …?” Malakhi began but Nehemya held up a single luminescent finger to his lips. He glanced over his shoulder towards the next room where his daughter was getting ready for work, and then turned back to Malakhi. “It’s our little secret, okay?”

  Malakhi beamed from ear to ear at his grandfather’s surprise. Being the well-mannered boy he was, he could not accept it without some reciprocation. Seeing Nehemya’s plain bagel, Malakhi took his knife and sliced the loaded bagel in two equal halves. He placed one half on his grandfather’s plate as he took a slow and savory bite of the other half.

  Malakhi thought of all the things he and his grandfather had done the last couple of months, this moment was one of the best. They had visited the ocean on more than one occasion. He remembered Nehemya joking that he didn’t think he would need to use sunscreen due to his current skin condition. In some ways it was a disturbing thought, but it was just another example of Nehemya’s good humor about any situation. He was always in a joking mood. Malakhi was not sure if this was his normal personality or it was because he was an Impal. His mother assured him his grandfather was the same as ever.

  “He looks like I remembered him when I was six years old,” Rebekah told him. “He used to be slim before he got older.”

  Impals never resembled their appearance at death. Their eternal appearance seemed to hail from a time when they were happiest and most comfortable.

  They travelled together free from worry of detention or harassment. The Israeli government was tolerant of the Impals. They were probably the most tolerant government on the pla
net. Most other nations were rounding them up and relocating them. Of course, there was the extreme example of the United States under the leadership of General Ott Garrison. He was putting them through the Tesla Gates as fast as he could capture them. Publicly he was rounding them up for their own safety; privately he was sending what he believed to be demons back to Hell. It didn’t matter to him if they were shredded out of existence or transported back. He was doing his service for God and country.

  The Jewish community as a whole had seen these tactics before, used with similar mantras and motivations. They learned from the mistakes of history, even though the mistakes were not their own.

  Many Israelis had adopted the symbol made popular by the American resistance. They now displayed it almost as prominently as the Star of David. The Myriad, a half solid and half transparent infinity symbol, was an icon representing man’s eternal existence. It suggested that flesh and spirit are both an important part of infinity. It recognized that flesh and blood are not a requirement for being a human being. This symbol was called the Myriad because it represents many for infinity.

  Malakhi owned one which he wore on a dingy red string around his neck. It resembled a sideways number ‘8’; made from half pewter and half clear plastic. He got it for his birthday present a couple of weeks earlier at the local bazaar. His mother remarked that when the sun hit the plastic it shimmered like an Impal. He wore it with pride. His pendant made an ethical statement, but also reminded him of his grandfather.

  It shimmered in the light of the morning sun coming through the small kitchen window, drawing his eyes down as he placed the cream cheese and lox covered bagel on Nehemya’s plate. It was a distraction that would haunt him because, when he looked back up, his grandfather seemed strange.

  Malakhi first thought Nehemya was upset that he gave half of his bagel back. This was before the unsettled expression grew into one of panic. His grandfather was fading. When Nehemya was little more than a vapor he heard his grandfather’s faint voice say, “I love you, Malakhi.” Then, he was gone. A half-eaten bagel on his plate and crumbs in his seat were the only evidence he ever existed.