Skyquakers (15 page)

‘
Shh
!
’
she snapped.

Ned inched back.
‘
What are you? Tell me!
What
are you
?
’

James started banging on the door.
‘
Ned!
What
’
s going on in there
?
Open the door
!
’

Ned knew he should have lunged for his gun, but it was too
late. Outside, the thunder clashed.
Moonboy
started
barking hysterically.

PART TWO

She had that same dream again, the one where she was
swimming in an infinite blue lake towards the bright light of the sun,
glistening through the ripples on the surface. Only it wasn’t like water,
because she could breathe just fine, and it wasn’t the sun that she was
swimming towards. She was very young in these dreams, a small child, drifting
upwards, floating gently into someone
’
s arms. A tall man scooped her
up from the lake and suddenly the air was thicker than it felt when she was
submerged. He held her up and smiled at her: big eyes, long arms. He made
gargling sounds and pulled funny faces to amuse her. She laughed. She touched
his hands and they felt old, wrinkled, with thick, leathery skin under her soft
palms. But it was a gentle touch, a familiar one. She called him Baba. He
called her Lo. Little Lolo. It was all just baby talk. Baba and Lo played
games, simple games, like identifying shapes and colours, and animals from
picture cards. They were more like lessons, actually, and at first she
struggled to memorise them, but gradually, as the sessions repeated themselves
over and over, the words began to stick.

Lara woke with her cheek against the pillow. She sat upright
in bed and looked around her room, as though unsure if she was meant to be
here. It was dark. Dylan was asleep beside her, rolled onto his side. He made a
groaning noise.

‘Baba. Baba,
’
she said out loud, forcing
herself to recall the word which echoed in her dreams. Why was it so familiar?
She was a baby back then, when Baba was in her life; she must have only been
three, maybe four. Who was Baba? She thought of him as an uncle or a neighbour,
an unrelated friend-of-family, but could not put a face to the name. More so,
she didn
’
t understand why she kept having these repetitive
dreams about this man from her childhood. The scene was almost the same each
night and it was becoming frighteningly frequent. There was an underlying
feeling of warning to these visions too, as though she needed to prepare. She
needed to remember these lessons from her past for a future moment when they
would be needed and her ability to recall them would be tested.

When Lara was young, not long out of her cot, her parents
noticed her obsession with her bedroom curtains: she could only sleep with them
open, with the moonlight streaming in. When they asked her why she needed to do
this, tiny Lara responded,
‘
So that the people can find
me.
’
Thinking this was some reference to Santa or the
Tooth Fairy, they let it slide as childhood imagination. To this day, Lara
still slept with the curtains open. She felt uncomfortable, perhaps a little
claustrophobic, without a view of the city lights from her bed, the red and
white dots from the windows of the distant apartment high-rises of Melbourne,
perhaps the beam of a passing helicopter. As a child, she was known to be a
pleasant sleeper. She hardly ever stirred or woke her parents in restlessness.
Not a peep was heard from her baby monitor until early morning.

But lately that had not been the case. Eighteen years on,
and dreams of Baba were flooding back like repressed memories. They were giving
her insomnia. She wanted to wake Dylan and tell him all about it, but he worked
night shifts and got home well after midnight, so disturbing him for something
as trivial as a dream would only annoy him. Instead, she got up, went
downstairs for a glass of water, walked in a circle around the house once or
twice, and then went back to bed. As soon as she closed her eyes again, the
dream vanished and she slept well. In the morning she woke with little concern
for these images, and she went about her days awake and focused.

Occasionally, something odd would spark her memory. She
would hear thunder and be jolted by the sensation of floating upwards. She saw
an advertisement at the bus stop for
‘
The finest lamb in town!
’
and remembered the images of cows and sheep on preschool flashcards. Over the
radio she listened to the announcement of the upcoming Veteran
’
s
Day parade and it gave her shivers down her spine, along with flashes of Baba
holding her, and that feeling of something lurking towards her
–
towards them all.

When she first told Dylan about it, perhaps after the fourth
consecutive dream, he seemed only vaguely entertained. He was eating cereal in
the kitchen, leaning against the bench while watching the TV in the far corner
of the room. She partially caught his attention as she tied up her hair for
work.

‘Did I sleep well last night?
’

‘Yeah. Why?
’

‘I had a weird dream.
’

‘Ah-huh.
’

‘I keep having the same dream over and over. And they don
’
t
feel like dreams; they feel like memories.
’

‘Ah-huh. What time are you home?
’

‘About six. Do you want anything?
’

Eyes still on the screen, he waved about the cereal box
beside him.
‘
We
’
re out of Coco Pops.
’

Lara and Dylan were both twenty-two, living in an outer
Melbourne suburb in a one-bedroom apartment with no laundry and no elevator.
While she studied her Masters in Social Sciences at a community centre during
the day, he worked as a barman at night. Their routine schedules kept them on
top of bills, but it was tiring. At times, Lara felt too young to be lacking
this much energy. She felt as though she was stuck in the life of a
forty-year-old, with ten-hour days, grocery shopping and laundry chores,
reading the newspaper on the bus (honestly, who read the newspaper anymore?), and
at night, all she wanted to do was sit in her
trackie
pants with a hot Milo and watch bad reality TV. She had drinks on Friday nights
with work friends at a local bar, wine and calamari, but she was home before
midnight. Any attempt to stay out later would overwhelm her with exhaustion.

Dylan worked until the early hours, gone by the time she
returned from the centre, and still asleep when she left in the morning. His
waking hours were midday
til
first light; he
functioned well on very little sleep and he enjoyed the night life. The concept
of a nine-to-five workday bored the hell out of him, and so neither could grasp
the appeal of the other
’
s lifestyle. It was the
equilibrium of their lives, the downside being, obviously, the quality time
with each other that they seldom achieved. A dinner for two out on a Wednesday
night, or a Sunday afternoon movie: these small hours were infrequent, and both
wished they had more, but not at the sacrifice of their beloved jobs. Once or
twice a month Dylan drove to the centre and they went to a nearby caf
é
during her lunch break. Attempting to reverse the scenario never quite
worked the same: after his
‘
early
’
shifts,
finishing off at one
A.M.
,
Dylan, at least once a week, would call her up and invite her to meet him for a
night in the city. By the slur of his words, it sounded as though he had
arrived at the party already, but he could never convince her to come.

‘I have to be up at 6:30 in the morning, Dylan!
’

‘
Nah, it
’
ll be fine! Come on!
’
yelled the voice on the phone. Several other voices could be heard
egging her on in the background.

‘By the time I have a shower, get changed and get there, the
fun will be over.
’

‘
Pfft
! No it won
’
t!
’

She told him to have a good night, and then went back to
flipping through magazines in her fluffy slippers.

She was not sure exactly when the dreams began. Three months
before the storm? Four? The first few she disregarded, forgot, or didn
’
t
bother to connect. By the second week, a pattern was emerging. The name
‘
Baba
’
echoed in her head over and over, even when she was awake, and
eventually she linked it to the visions she kept having at night. The picture
cards, the words, the shapes and colours
…
Lara didn
’
t
start school until she was five, but these lessons were when she was much younger.
From what her parents recalled, she never went to any early learning
pre-school. It was all a mystery. Baba and Lo: who were they meant to be?

She asked her parents when she next visited them if any
older man in her life had ever called her Lo. They couldn
’
t
think of anyone, nor could they recall a tall man she ever called Baba.

‘No, hang on,
’
her dad said. He was reaching
into the fridge for the jam to make a sandwich.
‘
You had a
toy when you were three that you called Baba. It was a bear, but you had
trouble saying
‘
bear
’
so you
called it
‘
Baba
’
.
’

‘What happened to the bear?
’

‘We threw it out ages ago. It was so ratty and old.
Why?
’

‘Oh, I don
’
t know. I think I remember
that bear though.
’

In her dreams she could talk to Baba. He answered simple questions
with a plain, monotonous voice; deep and melodic, like that of a
fondly-remembered school teacher.

‘Am I with you right now?
’

‘Yes, Lo.
’

‘Have I been here long?
’

‘No, Lo.
’

‘Should I be afraid of you?
’

‘No, Lo.
’

And then eventually, as a child, she integrated the bear.
When she met Baba again, she held the toy out to him.

‘Baba,
’
she said, the plush toy
outstretched in her arms.

Baba did not understand. He took the toy, examined it as
though it was foreign to him. And then he handed it back to her, saying,
‘
No,
Lo.
’

Her grandmother claimed it wasn
’
t a bear:
Baba was what she called Dorothy the Dinosaur on tapes of
The Wiggles
that she used to dance to when she was about two years old, right up until five
or six. She loved Dorothy, and would bop along to the songs on TV all day,
captivated by the green monster. She had no idea what to make of dancing
dinosaurs, but whenever they put the tape in the VCR, little Lara would start
shouting,
‘
Baba! Baba!
’

So she went back to Baba, the one in her dreams. As a child,
she held out a video tape to him, a big, chunky, black VHS device from her
childhood. He did not know what that was either, probably even more so than the
teddy bear. He shook his head at it.

‘No, Lo.
’

Whoever Baba was, and wherever the name originated from, he
loved her very much. She could feel
–
sense
–
his
affection in her dreams. Dylan said she sometimes smiled in her sleep, although
he was convinced it was for him.

‘Baba, do you love me?
’

‘Yes, Lo.
’

‘Do you love me very much?
’

‘Yes, Lo.
’

Lara
’
s interest in the paranormal
stemmed from some unknown inkling in the back of her mind that she and the
supernatural were pre-determinedly linked, as though it was genetic. From an
early age, she began with unicorns and fairies, spirits and talking trees. When
her mother took her grocery shopping, she was always allowed to get one new
wishing stone from the incense store on the way home. Her collection was vast,
containing one stone of almost every possible colour and polish, and she kept
them all in a little velvet bag in her sock draw.

In her teenage years, she was obsessed with Ancient
Egyptians and claimed she was going to be an archaeologist, so that she could
go digging for treasures and mummies in the Valley of the Dead. Their colourful
representation of gods, with bird and jackal heads, their mysterious
hieroglyphs, their extravagant funeral rituals and their magnificent empires
were all captivating to a girl destined to become a scholar; far more magical
than the boring, mundane world she lived in. She had travelled to Thailand,
Laos, Vietnam, Japan, and had witnessed the enormous temples built in honour of
the gods and the spirits; ethereal beings which were once
–
and in most places around the world, still were
–
accepted
as physically present amongst them. Even today, their existence was not
questioned amongst a vast majority of the world
’
s
population, no matter the form or name that this existence went by, and yet
she, deep down, knew that her belief, if ever uttered aloud, would most
certainly be laughed at above all. The belief of this particular entity,
as invisible and as untouchable as all these other gods,
had, for more than fifty years, been made a mockery of, and now the true
believers were not classed as pilgrims or humble followers of a higher power,
but as nutcases whose hilarious anecdotes were explored satirically in Louis
Theroux documentaries.

Lara was amongst millions of people worldwide who believed
in aliens. More so, she believed they had visited her numerous times, back when
she was too young to fully remember it. Dreams of these bizarre events – being
with an older man, sitting in a classroom, learning nouns and verbs on
flashcards – came and went fleetingly, but that year, in the months leading up
to Veteran
’
s Day, they intensified rapidly, as did her need to
understand them.

Initially, she wanted to know if what she had seen was even
plausible. The Internet was simultaneously the best and the worst source of
truth one could possibly hope to find, since any possibly real cases of
abduction were a needle in a haystack of drunk farmers stumbling through the
woods and being blinded by flashing lights. Among the more well-documented and
famous abduction stories, there was a former president of the Kalmykia region
of Russia, who claimed human-like beings visited him and told him that they
invented the game of chess, of which the president was quite skilful at. There
was a logger in Arizona who was witnessed by five of his friends to have been
zapped by a blue beam of light. The police, failing to find the logger, began
investigating his friends for murder, but five days later he reappeared
suddenly and found himself lying on a pavement with little recollection of what
had happened. In one documentary, professors and doctorate-level engineers from
prestigious universities had been hired by the U.S. military to identify the
components of spacecraft debris during the 80’s, crafts which they described as
being ‘designed for beings much smaller than humans.’

The multitude of stories she read contained few, if any,
details which mirrored her experience, and the reoccurring factors in most of
these anecdotes were absent with hers: the farm-like terrain or the long
highway, the floating orbs of light, the experimental table of torture, even the
various descriptions of glossy-eyed, balloon-headed beings. Baba was not like
that. From what Lara could recall, he looked entirely normal to her, just a
very tall man with a deep, soothing voice. He played games with her. He taught
her the names of things on colourful flashcards. And Lara grew up in the city
all her life, significantly deviating from the cliché.

‘Fake, fake, all fake,
’
she
sighed, clicking through them all.
‘
Nope, nope, nope.
’

But it didn
’
t deter her from finding
someone, anyone, who was like her. Internet forums on conspiracy-based websites
allowed her to watch real people connect with one another and share their
stories. There was one popular website titled
Veni
,
Vidi
,
Edi
Edisti
, which translated to:
I Came, I Saw, I Ate
Ham
. The VVEE was run by a series of anonymous computer whizzes and
conspiracy junkies, the head of which was convinced he was abducted and was
forced to eat various foods at the aliens
’
table for
their scientific studies of the Earth
’
s fauna and flora, so that
they could document what ate what. He called himself the Ham Hamster. Everyone
posted under these nonsensical codenames, and often they spoke of their
experiences as though it was being written in the log book of an undercover
military operative.

At 2300 a light appeared at my
window and I knew that it was the OWL ONES again. I proceeded aboard, where,
once inside the COOP, I was taken to the CONTROL ROOM via LEVITATION, and came
across the TRANSMUTATOR. Before I lay down, I proceeded to remove my pants, as
instructed by TELEPATHY...

They were comical at best, but there were no jokers here:
each and every user was adamant in their beliefs, and each ranged from outback
to townhouse to suburbia, from blue guys to lizard guys to guys wearing clown
masks, and from probing to levitating to mind control. She felt stupid to be
resorting to this, but the VVEE had one of the largest audiences catered to
this one niche of interest, a global encyclopaedia with millions of
contributors, so it may be the best pond to cast her line into.

And so, on a quiet Wednesday night, with nothing much to
watch on TV, Lara stretched out her fingers and, under the light of her laptop
screen, reached out to the world with her story.

When I was very young, about 2,
perhaps as old as 5, I went repeatedly missing from my bed. I remember floating
up towards a bright light, and up there I met a tall man who I called Baba. He
showed me cards with animals, numbers, colours, and plants drawn on them, and I
recited words with him. I had long forgotten about these lessons until just
now, when these memories, in the form of dreams, have become more and more
frequent, to the point where it has forced me to come to awkward and
humiliating sites like this. No offence, Mr Hamster.

I
just want to find someone who has had the same experience as me, because it
’
s beginning to drive
me insane.

-
Fructzul
een
.
       

She went to bed after writing it, and tossed about in her
sheets for hours, wanting to delete her post out of sheer embarrassment.

‘This is stupid. This is really stupid!
’

She was certain readers on the other end of her post were
having a good laugh at her right now for her ridiculous story. Either that, or
her post was being completely ignored and outshone by the ten thousand more
interesting cases on the net. It was difficult to rationalise: she was a
student of science, an intellectual, well-read, worldly, and above all,
logical. To resort to something so obscure was a new low for her, and if she
was ever found by her colleagues or family to believe she was a victim of
extra-terrestrial mischief, they would no doubt consider committing her. Even
if she ever shared her story with Dylan, he would probably laugh at her. She
had heard his views on aliens before when they once watched a documentary
together about crop circles on the Discovery Channel.

‘If aliens were close enough to reach us, which they just
aren
’
t, they would announce their arrival with trumpets
and sirens,
’
he said.
‘
I mean,
they would know from all the radio broadcasts and satellites that we were an
intelligent species. I don
’
t think they would come
millions of light years just to abduct a farmer and stick a probe up his bum.
’

But there was one line in her story, one additional mark of
brilliance, which may allow Lara’s post to be noticed:
Fraczul
een
. It meant nothing in English, but it was a
word, a word she knew would perhaps help her find, in the vast interconnected
cyber world, someone who understood her mental anguish.

It was not until the next night that she sat down at her
laptop again, rugged up in pyjamas and sipping hot chocolate, and she decided
to check in on VVEE and see who had responded, if anyone, and what they had to
say about her story.

To Lara
’
s surprise, she had over a
dozen responses from codenamed users who swore they too had been through the
exact same process and were taken by the same beings. The overlapping screens
were all personal chats other users had attempted to start with her, to express
their compassion towards her story and to add details of their own.

Yes! Yes! That happened to me too!
And these guys were a silvery colour, weren
’
t they? With horns on their heads?

Nope.

The same thing happened to me,
Fructzul
. It
’
s
the government who are hiding these things and keeping everyone quiet. They
’
ve tried to tap my phone
twice now. I
’
d
be careful, because they probably want you now too.

Highly doubt it.

We need to talk.

-
Fructzul
een
mrauu
.
          

Lara sat up, startled.

‘
Fructzul
een
mrauu
,
’
she said.
‘
No
way.
’

She stared at that little comment on the bottom of her page.
She stared and stared and could not believe her eyes. The words were there, the
correct words. Someone had actually passed the test. This meant
…
well, this meant Lara was not alone.