Dark Forces

Meanwhile, Ronetta Suarez wandered into the convenience store on the edge of town to begin her work shift, and found it eerily deserted. The store was unlocked, and Stephanie Pallini, the usual day clerk, was nowhere to be found.

Although there was no note, no text messages of phone calls, Ms. Pallini failed to show up for her shift the next day, and the next day after that.

14.

The drugs wore off and the questioning started.

I have since learned that many people who, either deliberately or inadvertently, cross onto a secret federal installation without permission often remember very few, if any details about their arrest and subsequent questioning. They are under such heavy sedation during the ordeal that when they are released, they remember virtually nothing beyond seeing uniformed men approach them, then suddenly regaining full consciousness hours later with a huge chunk of missing time. In my case, although I was under sedation for much of the time, I don't believe they ever intended to let me go, so that may be the difference.

As soon as the fog in my mind had lifted enough to realize what was going on, I surveyed my surroundings. I had been placed in a dimly lit cell. There was a wall of bars in front of me with what looked like a key-card activated lock on the cage door. The cell itself was about as Spartan as one could imagine. Grey concrete was everywhere- grey concrete walls, a grey concrete slab with a thin mattress on it that served as a bed, a grey concrete pedestal sink and a grey concrete commode. And that was it- no shelving, mirror or windows, just the corridor and its fluorescent lights outside, with grey concrete floors and walls. There were no cells across from me, so I could not even communicate with the other prisoners. I could hear them though. They all seemed deranged or seriously mentally ill. At intervals there would be inhuman shrieks and screams from the adjacent cells, or other times maniacal laughter, and sometimes insane ranting that made no sense.

And everywhere was this acrid rotten egg smell. A foul chemical smell that was worse than the smell of unwashed bodies, it was some infernal stench that seemed to permeate the place.

While I was drugged out I had dim memories of being questioned, but I was under such heavy sedation that I can only vaguely recall giving the most honest answers that I could. Which was simply, that I had no idea what was going on, no; I was not some spy, and no; I had no intention of causing trouble. But once I was fully awake one recurring thought tormented me- what was so secret about a geothermal energy project, that they would feel the need to capture and interrogate anyone who found out about it? This question bothered me a lot. The whole unfairness of being detained, without trial, because of a power plant? It was so unjust! I resolved to find out if I could get away with it. But not before I resolved to get myself and Erin out of here first.

Time did not seem to exist. It just was, infinite and unchanging. I had no watch, no way of marking time, and no reading material or TV to pass the time. I was alone with my thoughts, and near constant anxiety and despair. And the sounds of demented and obviously insane inmates in the cells next to me only added to these feelings.

After what seemed like an eternity, a guard came in and brought a tray of food- peanut butter sandwiches, beef jerky, a bottle of water with the cap already opened, and a banana. Bland prison fare. I tried talking to him but he wouldn't even so much as grunt a reply. He slipped the tray through a slot near the floor and would say nothing more. I even asked, hey, can I at least see a lawyer? How long are you planning to keep me here? But he would say nothing.

There were drugs in the food and drink of course. As soon as I finished the meal; I was surprisingly hungry despite feeling as if I had no appetite, my mind immediately drifted back into the stoned semi-conscious haze.

This went on for longer than I could count. Days might have gone by, even weeks. I had no way of marking time. Except when they brought the food and the drink. But never once would the guard even reply to the simplest question or request. It was like screaming at a robot. There was a day when I saw two guards drag a man in on a gurney, obviously out cold and recently captured, just another hapless prisoner like myself. As before, when I tried to engage the guards in conversation, they ignored me as if I wasn't even there.

But then, I found myself sinking more and more into a fog, beginning to care less and less about my surroundings. It was the drugs that were in the food. I tried fasting at first, but eventually I would give in to thirst and hunger, as they knew I would. But these moments would give me moments of lucidity where I would take stock of my situation- and only despair. The anxiety and fear would return. And the screams. The screams were the worst. Cries of torture, pleading and shrieking. Often these screams did not even sound human anymore. I thought it odd that I seemed to be treated well enough; I was not tortured at all, so what was happening to the other prisoners?

And there were the things I thought I heard. Strange inhuman noises. Once I would have sworn that a dark hooded shadowy figure stalked past the front of the cell, and as it passed, my hair stood up.

But between those noises, and the ever present smell of rottenness that seemed to pervade the air, it seemed every minute was an agony. I tried many times to wrestle the bars free, but they were tight- and I had no instruments to help in an escape- the guards had left me only my clothes and a few plastic eating utensils that were useless for any other purpose. I had not shaved or bathed for as long as I was in that place. So I stopped caring about sobriety, stopped caring about anything- and let the drugs carry me away.

The blank smiling man came to interrogate me every once in a while. He was the only human contact I had. But the only thing he had was questions for me, and they were always the same ones. How did you find this place? What brought you to Disaster Peak? What do you know about the Azzacov Project? Where are you from? He must have asked them all, a half a dozen times. He would answer none of mine. I told him the same thing over and over. Only that I was just a trapped kid who was sightseeing what I thought was just an abandoned mine.

One day- day or night, who could tell anymore- I was in a relative state of lucidity. Perhaps it was before mealtime, I don't remember. The blank smiling man came to interrogate me again. Only this time, he had two accomplices, two guards.

They opened the door and entered my cell. "Turn Around." One of them said, simply. I complied, out of fear and partly out of a belief that maybe, my wild hope, they were planning to release me at last. But instead, they just cuffed my hands behind my back, attached shackles to my legs and placed a hood over my head. Blindfolded, they dragged me out of the cell and down the hall. I could not see where they were leading me, but I could hear sounds- deranged screams, both men and woman, as we walked down the hall.

"Watch your feet, we are going up a flight of stairs" one of them said. We climbed a flight then I felt myself led into a small room. There was a whirring noise and an odd feeling of heaviness- this must be an elevator, I thought. Then they led me down another hall, still blindfolded, into another room. I heard a door close and they removed my blindfold.

I was seated on a blank chair in a blank windowless room that was sparsely furnished except for a desk and file cabinet. Across from me sat the smiling man, in a nondescript suit. No name plate was on his desk, no pictures of family or of anything else for that matter. Only a computer and a stack of papers. In the room was only file cabinets and bare walls, and in the corner was a desk. Bare and grey, just like the man across from me. He grinned.

"You are Ryann Jessick, of Santa Rosa California. Grandson of Helen and Roger Canfield of Paradise Valley. You were observed on the afternoon of June 29^th trespassing at this facility, and were arrested and brought into this facility for detention on July first."

"Is there anything you would like to say for yourself before I continue?"

I had many things to say, actually. I hoped he would listen. And for the first time, he was questioning me when I was fairly lucid, the latest round of truth serum or whatever it was having worn off."

"Yes." I replied. I would like to say, I'm sorry for what I have done."

"And what have you done?"

"I am sorry for entering the area without permission. I didn't see any signage, so I thought it would be okay. I would never had come here if I knew it was off limits." I replied.

"Understandable." He nodded, almost sympathetically. "And you need to understand my position. We go to great lengths to keep this place secret. If we were to place signage up, first of all it is technically public land, and so that would arouse suspicion, and secondly, it would draw attention to this place that we don't want. But we have remedied that. The place is now gated and posted, I can assure you."

"So why is it so secret?" I asked. "It's just a power plant, right? I mean, why don't you want people to know about a geothermal plant? Is it to feed, like, some military installation or something? Like Area 51? Or, I'm sorry, I don't mean to ask if..."

"Aaaah. Yes. That is the question of the day." He was now smiling triumphantly.

Would I now finally get some answers for a change? I was certainly tired of giving them. My heart started beating.

"How long have I been here?" I asked."

"You were captured and brought here ten days ago."

Ten days. My trip out here should have been over by then, and I should be back in Santa Rosa, if not for this nightmare...

The man continued, "Yes, this is a power plant. But it's not "Just" a power plant. Surely you realize that by now. This is an experimental facility. Do you know why this project is named after a Russian scientist? Let me start there."

I'm not sure why he decided to revel this information to me finally. Perhaps he finally realized that I had literally told him everything I knew and no amount of coercion was going to get anything more out of me. Or perhaps, more chillingly, he felt that he had no intention of ever letting me out of here alive. So there was no further point of keeping information about this project from me as I would take it to my grave regardless.

But what he told me nonetheless gave me the chills.

"In 1970, some Russian scientists were involved in a research project to study the earth's mantle. They had planned to drill up to eight miles beneath the crust to obtain samples of rock from that depth. Azzacov, you see, was the scientist in charge of that project. But instead, when they reached a depth of 32,000 feet, something happened that scared the Russians so deeply that they abandoned the project out of fear. Instead of a solid or liquefied rock mantle, they encountered a void, a sort of, cavity miles deep under the crust. An empty cavity where none was believed to be possible at that depth and pressure. And as soon as their drill rig reached it, the temperature shot upwards, by hundreds of degrees beyond the surrounding rock. When they lowered the microphone into the hole, what they heard terrified them. It was sounds that sounded like shrieks of torment and pain- literally, the screams of the damned. It also was rife with strange electromagnetic energies that had not been studied or encountered before. The Russians, being of less educated and superstitious minds, believed that they had dipped into Hell itself. But yet, they failed to fully appreciate what it was they discovered."

"The heat energy generated by that cavity was inexhaustible. An endless supply of cheap energy. And think about that for a second. Clean, inexhaustible heat energy. Enough geothermal power to power the entire country forever. No more fossil fuels, no more nuclear- just endless geothermal heat."

"So, the Department of Energy commissioned us to try a new experiment with ultra-powerful and experimental ground penetrating radar, new technology that would penetrate to depths of up to 32,000 feet, to see if we could tap into a similar energy source to what Dr. Azzacov and the Russians found. And so we did. We did some exploration on public lands in the remote western United States, and we found a cavity at this very spot, at only 29,000 feet below the surface. Shallower than where the Russians first dug.

"So we refurbished and expanded the old mine workings and brought our drilling equipment here. We bored down to the depth of the void, sunk a long turbine shaft into the ground and installed steam turbines inside the mine. We have only recently hooked into the grid. Our power output is already nearly three times that of Valmy."

"The only problem is, the electromagnetic energy that emanates from the void. It is unpredictable and dangerous. It is not radiation, nor does it behave consistently or predictably like most normal EMF radiation. And, I fear, it can affect human's brains that are exposed to it. We don't know how or why. Only that, many of the people we have here have been affected and have become dangerously violently insane. We believe it is due to some kind of stray electromagnetic field effect on the brain. Superstitious people claim it is evil spirits, but I, for one, believe in no such nonsense. The thing is, we have found a way to trap some of this stray radiation inside aluminum capacitors that are then sealed inside glass globes. It can be totally self-contained. Although even still, the properties of these glass globes have proven to be toxic and unpredictable to people who handle them. Even the globes cannot totally shield this radiation. But we only need a reliable and safe way to store them. We have unfortunately experienced many difficulties in that regard; that I have chalked up to just dumb bad luck. But rest assured we are working on it as we speak."

"And I do believe that in order for this power supply to be safe, its effects need to continue to be tested on human subjects. With this much energy, we believe we must make it safe and develop it to its full potential. And you, my friend..." (He shook his head sadly as he said this.)

"...I regret that you have, unwittingly, become one such subject. I had no choice. Think of it though, once we make this process safe, learn how to shield people from its effects, we could be pioneers in the renewable energy industry. Think about that. Perhaps you yourself could be compensated in some way. But we need your trust. What do you say to this?"

I thought of Erin then, trapped like I was down here. Would she agree with me basically going along with this mad scientist scheme? And no matter what, being held against our will, how ethical was it that we were basically guinea pigs.

"Well, this is all, interesting" I said. "But even if I agree to 'help' you, when will you let us go? And what about...What about Erin? I want to see her. I want to talk to her, tell her what is happening! And my mother! She has no idea what happened to me. Can you let me call my Mom? And Erin- can you bring her to me, I mean, I love her. Is she okay?"

"Yes I'm sure you care about your little girlfriend a lot. Don't you." He said, in a snarky voice.

"And you will see her soon. I can make that arrangement. Your mother, meanwhile, is safe and is likewise aware of your...situation. I assure you. But yes, you can see your girlfriend soon. Would you like that? Just think about what I said. This is serious business you kids have found yourself in, my friend."

The thought of seeing Erin again, just knowing she was okay, gave me some comfort. I wanted nothing else but to hold her, hug her, bring her into my arms and tell her this will be okay. Telling her that would almost make me believe it myself. In the meantime however, the guards came for me and simply led me back to my cell, blindfolded and alone.

15.

Hours uncounted passed. The thought of Erin, my mother- happy memories, kept me going, but more and more it was the drugs. The only thing that kept the anxiety at ease. Outside the cell bars, the screams, the increasing infernal stench, made it harder and harder to stand being here without being sedated. More and more I saw, or thought I saw, drifting black shapes float by out of the corner of my eye.

Then I heard my name and I snapped awake. Was I sleeping? I was dreaming of something trying to invade me, trying to crawl in through my mouth, and then whispering in my ears to do terrible things but I was fighting it...fighting- but now I was awake. Two people were standing outside my cell door which was open. One of them was the smiley man. Only now his fake plastic smile looked murderous, creepy. His eyes were barely human. But he still smiled. He said, "Here is someone who you wanted to see. She has missed you. I know you two have so much to talk about."

Of all the horrors of this ordeal that I experienced, this was the worst by far.

Erin was here, but yet it wasn't really her. This thing was a monster in human flesh.

Her eyes were dark. Soulless black windows. This thing that was standing in front of me had Erin's body, her face, her looks. It looked like her. But her mind was gone. Erased. I could somehow tell immediately. Even standing close to her brought me a strange mix of chills and an unspeakable terror, just like some dark dissonant vibration, much like I had felt each and every time I was questioned by the smiley man.

The being that inhabited Erin's body spoke. It wasn't her voice. It was more of a deep growl.

"You need to be like us. Join us. It will be over soon."

"Erin? What happened to you? What did they do to you!"

Her black pupils were unblinking, and she/it spoke again. "They need to feed, you see. You must understand. They need to feed and they will simply kill you unless you let them inside. But if you let them feed then you will live. Stronger, more powerful, better. Wouldn't you like that?"

"What are you talking about? What ARE you?"

She bared her teeth at him. It was like her teeth had been filed into sharp points. Then I saw her hands. There was blood dripping from her left hand, and imbedded in her hand was shards of broken yellow glass.

"Oh God, Erin, what did they DO to you?"

She seemed to smile. Her eye sockets were like black orbs, and staring into them was like staring into a dark and empty void- the void of total annihilation.

"WHAT DID YOU DO TO HER!" I screamed at the smiley man.

He shook his head and said, "These energy sources, sometimes the globes can't contain them. It was just like all the rest of them, she broke it open. For some reason, most of them do. I cannot help her. But as for me- I believe she is right. These things ARE like animals, and they DO need to feed. But don't worry. It is a symbiotic relationship. She just hasn't learned to control it yet. But she will. Erin is a smart girl. And look at me. I am like her too and I am absolutely fine. You can be like us as well. It won't hurt, it will even make you feel good. Just let us in. Let us help you."

Then Erin, or the possessed thing that had been Erin, spoke again.

"They needed to get out. Soon everyone will be like us. It will spread. Take your Mom for example. She always said you were weak." She said this last in a mocking sneer.

"Your Mom is here, with us. And unless you open yourself to us, become like us, you will die here alone in the dark."

I tried to reach her. Hoping that somehow, some way, there was a part of her that was still there. I poured my heart out, desperately. "I want the sweet girl that I love, that liked kissing under the desert sky, liked cuddling on the beach, and picking flowers in the desert. Can you bring her back? Erin, I LOVE you!"