Whitley Strieber - 2012 - The War for Souls

“Holcomb is fifteen miles from here.”

“I rest my case.”

“You saw my flashlight from your house?”

“Absolutely.”

“And you got out here in what—five minutes? I don’t think so. You’ve been out here for a while, because you’re raiding the Cubans, you shit.”

“You’re raiding ’em, too, you shit. Otherwise, why would you be out here yourself?”

“Bastard.”

“You’re the bastard, because you can afford the damn things and they’re a precious luxury to a poor cop.”

“I’m hardly rich.”

“Your kids are in an exclusive private school in K.C. Not to mention the Jeepazine with which you convey them to said school daily.”

“It’s moderately customized.”

“TV in a Jeep is very froufrou for rural Kansas, buddy. Look, let’s go down to my wife’s roadhouse and get hammered. We can take cigars with us, the place is closed, nobody’s gonna know.”

“Brooke’s gonna get suspicious if I stay out here too long. And as for coming home drunk, that’s been done one too many times.”

“Man, I have to admit I’d like to be pussy—whipped by your ball and chain.”

“You think?”

They began to wander back, both of them planning future cigar raids, hopefully more successful ones. The point was to smoke more than half of the cigars. The guy who did that was the winner.

As they reached the ridge that overlooked Wiley’s house, he noticed, in his office, a light. It came, glowed bright, then went.

He stopped. “You see that?”

“Actually, yeah.”

“Given that my family’s asleep, I’m concerned.”

The light came again, flickered, and was gone.

“Looks like you got a short workin’ in there.”

As he scrambled down the ridge to the house, Matt stayed right with him. He was a reprobate, but he was also a dutiful cop.

They arrived at the edge of Wiley’s yard. His pool stood still and silent. The light flashed bright, and there was a sputtering sound from the open window.

They went in through the screen door. Matt dug the fire extinguisher out of the closet while Wiley dashed up to his office.

He looked at the desk, at the cords running down behind it. Nothing was sparking.

“So what is it?” Matt asked, coming in.

Could it have been the reptilians, maybe here to wreck the book? They’d broken through before, for sure. Sort of broken through.

Matt bent down and brought up a frayed cord. He shook it and it sparked. “Sadie do this?”

Their Burmese cat was a notorious cord chewer. “I forgot to close the door.”

“She could’ve burned down your family, buddy.”

“Thanks for helping me, Matt.”

They said their good-byes, and Matt went clomping off down the stairs.

Wiley started to leave the office, but was stopped by sounds that should not be there. Footsteps. Somebody pacing in the bedroom. But Brooke was asleep.

He realized that he was hearing Lindy Winters.

Their world was not an inch away, not a millimeter. If the physicists were right, they were infinitely close, and yet it would take more energy than existed in both universes together to enable them to make contact.

Except…the physicists appeared to be wrong, didn’t they?

Wiley sat down in his chair. He leaned back and closed his eyes, and when he did, Martin’s universe seemed to settle around him, caressing him like a living, complex fog.

The lenses were hooks, and they had hooked into Martin’s world, and it would not be long before they hooked into this one, too.

When he opened his eyes, nearly two hours had passed. It was nearly one. He needed to sleep, but he felt kind of sick inside, like somebody in a crashing plane would feel, waiting for the impact.

They were coming. That’s what this was all about.

In the other human world, NASA had announced that UFOs were real. Apparently, that had changed the balance, enabling the reptilians to enter on a tide of belief.

So far, that did not seem like anything our NASA was likely to do.

Now he understood why the government denied the obvious UFO reality. Somebody down deep in its secret corridors must know that belief counts, that it is the oil in the hinges of the doors between the worlds.

He heard another sound, coming in from outside. Metallic. Very faint, though. What was that?

It came again, faded again. He went to the window, leaned against the screen, trying to hear more clearly.

And there it was again, more distinct this time, and this time he could tell what it was—the unmistakable ringing of church bells. On a good day, you could hear them from out here in the hills, but who would be ringing them at this hour?

Matt lived closer to town, maybe he could hear better.

He picked up the phone, then hesitated. It was late and he was going to make Matt mad. But how could he not? Matt was the police chief and, at the moment, the town’s only cop. If somebody was ringing the bell of one of the churches, maybe it was because he couldn’t make a call.

He dialed, listened.

“Yeah?”

“Hey, I wake you up?”

“I sit by the phone all night waitin’ for you, you stupid fuck. So what in hell do you want?”

“Would you do me the favor of going to your window and tell me what you hear?”

“’Course not.”

“You’re a cop, aren’t you at least curious?”

“Not at all. Good night.”

“Matt! MATT!” And suddenly it wasn’t funny. He had to know.

“Yeah?”

“Just do it.”

There was a silence. It extended. Eventually, Matt came back. “Nothing.”

“You must have heard something.”

“The faint plink of leaves falling. Possibly, the snuffling of a possum, or it could’ve been a coon.”

“No church bells?”

“No, but I did hear something connected with church bells, actually. With belfries. Bats. In your belfry, squeaking like sonembitches.”

“Somebody is ringing bells down there, my friend.”

“You wake me up again, I’m gonna come out there and cuff your ass and put you in the tank.”

“The drunk tank’s rusted closed. You told me so yourself.”

“For you, I will apply Liquid Wrench.”

Wiley hung up. He flipped on his police scanner and watched the red LED race across the little screen. The scanner emitted a slight burp of static each time it crossed the county sheriff’s carrier wave.

Lonely sound. Lonely out here.

He’d damn well heard those bells.

Not in this version of Harrow, Kansas, though. If Matt had heard them, he would have gone down into town to check things out. He was too conscientious to dismiss something as odd as that. At best, it was going to be vandals, but at worst—well, maybe a fire, who knew?

If he could sit down at the laptop—if he dared to do that—he might find out. He turned it on. His hands stirred, moved. His fingers fluttered above the keys. Then they touched them. It was like watching a machine turn on. The hands were not his.

His fingers pounded keys. Stopped.

Then he looked down at what he’d written. “The masters of the sky were on the earth in those days—and also afterward—when the sons of God went to the daughters of men and had children by them.”

Was that a quote from the Bible? Or an ancient Hebrew text, maybe?

He googled the passage, came up empty.

But the masters of the sky had been the Nephilim, creatures who had come out of the air to rape and pillage, who had caused the devastating war portrayed in the ancient Indian Vedas, with their stories of sound-guided missiles, flying saucers, and nuclear bombs.

In legend, the coming of the Nephilim had marked the end of the last age.

As, indeed, according to the ancient Maya, December 21, 2012, marked the end of this one. The Mayan date 13.0.0.0.0.