Jonah Read online

  “Oh, you bet! Telling me through his special prophet, I suppose.”

  Did you ask your god of the score?

  That gave Jonah pause. You don't ask God about things you don't even conceive. In fact, hardly anyone he knows even believes in God anymore. What's the message? We're doomed to destruction or extinction as we are? A new breed has to happen or the world goes up in smoke? This isn't exactly what he was taught in Sunday school.

  Reason with us, Jonah. Hybrids are a nonreproducing mix of different species. Why would we create hybrids?

  “To be your slaves!”

  Your god would permit this?

  “I told you. He will step in. He's God.” He's wasting his breath. Demons always think they're more powerful than God.

  Peleh is staring hard at him. Perhaps your god has stepped in.

  “Our god created us, and he is giving you just enough rope to hang yourselves.”

  He might as well be a mouse squeaking in the jaws of a lion. The evil leprechauns are coaxing him out of his clothes, and he can't raise a finger to stop them. They wrench off his boots and socks, slide down his overall straps, pull his red thermal shirt over his head. His arms are as useless as rubber hoses. With one yank his overalls and longhandles are off. He is wearing briefs and they're going for those, too. The last of his dignity slides down his legs. He is the naked ape…woo! woo!

  Peleh's insectile head lifts. Baldy standing at Jonah's left elbow signaled Peleh's attention. Baldy points at Jonah's upper arm. Jonah is certain Baldy and Peleh can converse covertly, but Peleh is jerkily moving around the foot of the table to see for himself whatever it is that caused Baldy to signal him.

  Jonah reads it in Peleh's eyes. The alien's gaze is galvanized by the rose tattoo.

  For the first time, Jonah senses something close to fear emanating from them all. He flashes on stories he's heard from people who claim they've been abducted—okay, from other abductees. Alien fascination with false teeth, braces, fingernail polish. Maybe tattoos fall outside organic mechanics. Who are these guys?

  Released from Peleh's hypnotizing gaze, Jonah is feeling his mental strength return, but his body is still as helpless as one of Coral Kay's Barbie dolls. He tries, can't so much as clench a fist. And what would he do, if he could? Knock their heads together and fly this coop? His adrenaline is pumping. Organic mechanics in action.

  He notices the air is rippling with a new kind of energy, like happens before a thunderstorm. Peleh and crew are milling around, conferring, like soldiers confused by encrypted orders.

  A change is occurring in the white light engulfing the table. A thin silver beam sweeps into the room. It's as if the white light is being shoved aside like a curtain. Now the silver beam is as wide as the width of the table. It's like a damn sky corridor!

  High and back into its foggy regions, a being is beginning to emerge. He seems to be walking down the silver corridor with a steady, means-business gait. He stops short of filling the room with his presence…must be seven feet tall!

  Jonah's eyes feel cockeyed, as if he's viewing a Picasso character in a tilted picture. Is this a hologram? He shakes his head to clear the distortion, then stares.

  A dark blue cape over a black bodysuit, and knee-high black boots. The cape is dramatically draped over his shoulder like the Count of Monte Cristo posing for a media debut. His expression is proud and angry.

  Long, angular face topped with a black skullcap shaped like a prominent widow's peak, eyes like sapphires on fire. Well-defined features, a hawkish nose. Jonah only realizes he can move now, lifting his arm to touch his own nose, as if meeting a relative he never knew.

  Maybe it's his imagination, but he thinks the aliens are cowering in the presence of the powerful intruder, like a surprise inspection from the commander in chief. But he's not sure it's a real man, maybe only a vision….

  A beam strikes him smack between his eyes! His hands fly to his face and he jerks back. The intruder just communicated something to him.

  He's Zion's father! Zedapeth!

  Donating sperm now seems a trifle to the punishments he imagines for his behavior with the daughter of a bigger-than-life warrior. Not some insectile mental manipulator, but an otherworldly dude who can shoot a silver corridor of light down into a spaceship! Man in an indigo cape!

  Jonah faints.

  He comes to in a delirium of fear. The aliens are hastily pulling his clothes back on. You could row a boat in the tension in the room, as they fumble on his boots.

  Tall, Dark, and Scary is standing in the silver light, cape flung over his shoulder. Jonah feels like a lamb being fluffed up for sacrifice.

  Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life…but how close will it follow? Too far away, Jonah is sure, to help him escape Doom standing tall in the silver light. Two baldies help him stand up. His knees buckle. They yank him up, as if presenting a prize slave to a king.

  The cape unfolds…and unfolds…into a wing. The wing sweeps into the room and coils around his chest and arm.

  Swept up, Jonah blacks out.

  Chapter R (18)

  (R-1.) EARTHSIDE

  Zion finally told Triss her life story…what she could remember. Someone less savvy than Triss, hearing Zion speak of her origins, might worry that the fence between fantasy and reality had blown down in Zion's mind, but Triss hung on every word like a priest hearing the confession of a nun who dances topless on the side. She'd heard some far-out stories, some doozies. This one begged a leap, but Triss's mind has long legs, and her heart told her to go for it.

  The leap wasn't that great, considering her former membership in HAIL—Human Alien Intelligence Liaison. Triss had seen three UFOs, herself. Every member of HAIL had seen at least one, and some claimed to be abductees. But as exciting as all that was, eventually Triss's interest waned. Once you've seen a ship or three, you want more than a sighting. And that was the problem for the HAILers, too. Frustrated when they failed to get their hands on one of the little alien buggers, they set their sights on proving their conspiracy theories. But that wasn't the direction Triss was bent to. She was pretty sure no one was going to solve the mystery by taking on the government. Something a lot more mysterious was going on….

  When a member crossed the line of legality and broke into the computer files of the CIA, that was the end of HAIL for Triss. Her interest wasn't worth the risk of getting thrown in prison! But she did peek at a list of CIA agents who purportedly were part of the conspiracy. And on that list was the name of Anthony Ulysses Beaumont! Now, how many men in the world had a name like that? Triss was sure it was their Anthony, Jonah's brother. Everyone had given up Anthony for dead years ago—talk about deep cover! After she quit HAIL, she paid a hacker to investigate Anthony, to no avail, and she was afraid to pursue it. Maybe the agent wasn't their Anthony. Stick her nose too far into government business, those Men-in-Black might show up to harass her.

  Triss was suspicious of Zion's vague description of “other-dimensional” worlds. Didn't she say her memories were hazy? Or maybe she just wasn't ready to admit she was extraterrestrial. What else do you call people who hail from other worlds? And just as Triss had always suspected—they looked as human as you and me. Why, there were probably thousands of them posing as Earthlings, ETs who had come down for one reason or the other, some of them getting left behind, like Zion, unable to return to their home planets. But the ones who looked like aliens…those were robots.

  Triss had it figured out.

  The word was out that J.Q. Mahoney was away on a vision quest. Probably a long one. People in Apple Valley had to be told something. There was the people problem, and the truck problem. If Jonah told Coral the truth, Star Rock was a regular roost for men who liked to get away and think—and whatever other shenanigans men do in private, Triss wouldn't know but can imagine. Whatever, someone was bound to find his truck, and then the law would be snooping around Jo's Abode, probably thinking the woman had done him in and buried the
body!

  But the Universe was looking out for them, because straight away, Lulu Greystone, an old friend of Jo's, stopped by to visit. Lulu knew Zion, and she came right out and said she had a feeling “something was up.” Lulu was psychic. Triss and Zion told her as much as they dared, and Lulu said to just tell everyone that Jonah was on a vision quest, which was the truth in a way, they all agreed.

  No one thought for a moment that he might be up there dead. Lulu knew the way to Star Rock….

  It was a long, hard drive. Triss wasn't surprised. Would a UFO portal exist at a city park? Just as the women suspected, they found Jonah's truck parked near Star Rock. His blue parka was clumped on the ground beneath the only living thing here, a pitiful cedar tree. Zion assured Coral that Fairyland was warm, so Jonah didn't need his coat there.

  The tall rock slabs didn't look like a star, but they were weird. The skies were cloudy, and the wind was huffing over the barren ground. Under the wind, Triss could feel an eerie silence, like they were standing inside the belly of an invisible whale. Silly maybe, thinking about the Bible story, but all of the stories in the Bible were coded, Triss knew. The Jonah of antiquity might have been abducted by a water-based UFO—history repeats!

  Lulu started the truck, let the engine run a while, then drove it around a little to boost the battery. Zion was in charge of Coral and the story about fairies. It wasn't that far-fetched, Triss believed. Where the heck did such stories come from, if not from actual encounters with the little people who lived in the aura of Earth in light too bright for most eyes to penetrate?

  After all the fuss over the truck, Lulu said they needed to erect an energy shield around the area to keep away people who didn't belong. She invited everyone to join her in a ritual that involved some pretty strange dancing and singing, touching rocks, and voicing all kinds of important-sounding proclamations to the sky, mountains, and valley. Zion volunteered to come out each week until Jonah returned. Each week! Triss has a feeling Zion knows just how long he'll be gone, but she isn't at liberty to say.

  All the dancing and singing might have impressed the fairies, but they still had to deal with the Earthlings in Apple Valley. Lulu knew what to do. She would take Triss down to the Coffee Talk, Triss could size up Jonah's business affairs, acting like this was all planned. Lulu would deal with Frame Swenson, Jonah's best friend. She said she knew that Frame, Jonah, and several other men told tales about Star Rock. Jo's uncle, Oscar, had disappeared from the spot, but Oscar turned up a suicide in San Francisco a year later. Jo made sure no one in Apple Valley knew about Oscar's tragic death, except for family and close friends. Then Frame started the Star Rock legend, embellishing the story, saying that a half dozen men had gone up there and disappeared through a portal into another dimension.

  Lulu laughed and slapped her knees. She was a large woman with a head of curly gray hair Triss imagined she styled with a carpet beater.

  “Isn't that righteous?” Lulu said. “The fairy story Frame tells is what happened to Jonah!”

  Triss and Zion sat quiet.

  “Except in Frame's stories, the men never return,” Zion finally said.

  Lulu looked a little worried then.

  Triss knew for certain something weirdly wonderful happened up there at Star Rock, because her arthritis disappeared! For about a week…but when the soreness returned, it was less than before. She was tempted to make Star Rock her regular roost, but didn't want to tempt the Fates. Stories about abductions fascinated her, but she didn't want to be nabbed herself. She was too old for such malarkey.

  A good thing she was half an actress. Before she decided to make music her career, Triss acted in a couple of road shows, but she was too much of a Mahoney for the subtleties that professional acting called for. She took charge of the Coffee Talk, zipping it up for the winter. She handed over the paperwork to Jonah's accountant, told her to “do the usual,” and she told the renters, Hilde and Frame, to pay the rents to the accountant until Jonah returned.

  Frame Swenson was not taking Jonah's sudden disappearance blithely, so Triss asked him over for supper, thinking if he saw how casual the women at Jo's Abode were, he would let his suspicions ride. But he declined.

  “I'm sure you'll be the first one he calls when he gets back,” Triss told him.

  By Thanksgiving week, the women had completed moving Triss into the cottage. Except for missing Jonah, they were all getting along rather fine. Of course, Triss knew Zion had her private sufferings. Loving a man could be a condition as troubling to the mind as a crippling disease was to the body. Triss ought to know.

  Two days before Thanksgiving, Coral Kay lost her two front teeth. She put the little nubs under her pillow for the fairies, along with a note begging them to let her Daddy come home now. Pretty please with strawberries.

  In addition to two dollar bills in exchange for the teeth, Zion slipped a rose-quartz crystal under Coral's pillow while she was sleeping. The next morning she suggested to Coral that the crystal was a sign from the fairies to keep putting faith rocks in the doll buggy….

  (R-2.)EMRAY

  I know what happened to Old Jonah…he went fishing, a storm blew up out of nowhere and tossed the boat, rolling him out on a white sand beach. Half-drowned, he had a near-death experience. A simple fisherman, when Jonah entered the tunnel of light, naturally he perceived it to be the inside of a whale. He knew he was dead when there appeared a glowing angelic man who unscrolled a scroll and read him his rights.

  Jonah didn't actually see God, but his maker spoke to him, his voice booming like a waterfall in spring. Quivering, Jonah sat down on a rib and grabbed his knees to stop them from banging together and bruising his tender skin.

  God said, “Jonah, my son. You have lived a very careful life.”

  That sounded pretty good to Jonah. His trembling eased and he perked up his ears.

  “Why, you have lived so carefully, my son, your presence barely imprinted on the world.”

  The judgment still seemed to Jonah to be favorable, never mind the stern look on the angel's face as he glared in turns at the scroll, then at Jonah, as if he were having trouble matching the pristine record with this fishy-smelling dude the ocean had rolled into heaven's outer portal.

  “So carefully,” God continued, “the impression you left was as slight as a butterfly's wing flitting over a block of granite.”

  “Well, thank you, Lord God,” Jonah said humbly, thinking this was some compliment indeed.

  “Jonah, you left no mark.”

  Jonah couldn't help himself; he smiled.

  “You left no mark by which your destiny is determined.”

  “Huh?” Jonah sat up straighter.

  “Does a man embark upon a journey with a blank map? Who charts his course? Who marks the path a man walks upon?”

  Old Jonah was a simple man who had lived a careful life. But he was no dummy. There was that angel checking his list twice, searching for a mark of distinction, coming up blank, and all the talk about marks and maps determining a man's destiny was not lost on Jonah.

  “So what're you going to do with me!?” he said, feeling the heat of hell's broom swishing the air behind his back.

  “Nothing,” God said.

  “Nothing?”

  “A man reaps as he sows.”

  “Oh, man!…” Jonah hit his head with the palm of his hand, getting it. Sowed nothing—reaped nothing!

  “Tell you what I'm going to do, Jonah,” God said. “I gain nothing by a man who makes no mark, reaping nothing for a journey he cannot make for lack of a markless map. I am going to give you another chance, Son.”

  Jonah flung himself on the slimy floor of what he deemed to be the belly of a whale and started sputtering hosannas.

  Instantly he jerked awake, the sun shining down hot on his face. All he remembered of the dream was that he was supposed to do something important like…tell the Ninevites if they didn't shape up, they were all doomed!

  The King of Nineveh, impress
ed neither by the message nor the messenger, ordered this unshaven, derelict fisherman to be cast to the lions at morn. But Destiny having been activated by Jonah's bold act, he was rescued by Hortense, the royal hypnotherapist, who, by coincidence, happened to be conducting research on a recent trend of fools who claimed to be spokesmen for God.

  In the course of therapy, Jonah learned all sorts of interesting things, such as the symbolic meaning of spending time in the belly of a whale.

  “You were exploring the terrain of your subconscious,” Hortense explained, “where you encountered the screen upon which is recorded the significant events of your life.”

  “Weren't any,” Jonah admitted.

  Hortense had a solution. “Why don't you write a story for the Bible, Jonah? Would this not be a healthier way to exercise your imagination?”

  So he did. Writing himself up to be a more daring rascal than he was before he made his mark by telling a story about the trouble a man can get into, if he so dense as to think he can ditch a call.

  J.Q. Mahoney

  Jonah is dreaming. He is in the grip of the talons of a huge condor. The majestic bird is flying him across a dark sky. Ahead are surrealistic sky drapes, like the aurora borealis, in stunning arrays of pastel reds, lavenders, oranges, and purples, against the black expanse. He sees a silver staircase spiraling up into the heavens. The staircase fades and the condor flies him through the drapes….

  Now he is dreaming he is asleep, lying spread-eagled on the glistening surface of an emerald as large as Clyde's parking lot. The sky is cobalt blue, the sun, golden fire, the wind, a scurrilous cat-o'-nine-tails.

  Something splats on his stomach. Jonah snaps awake, stares down his body at the splotch of brilliant white goo…on purple silk fabric. He yells something that is not a word.

  He's dressed in a stupid, silky purple one-piece suit, like pajamas! His consternation hikes an octave when he touches his head. He's completely bald!

  What the hell happened to his overalls and long johns? “Of all the dirty…” Slipping down the loose neckline of the silky bodice, he checks his arm for the rose tattoo. Unreasonably, finding it intact, he feels relief, as if evidence that the most important things were not lost.