by Mark F. Bailey
When the Stranger came calling, I had only just buried my wife and child on the hill above our house. The dirt still on my hands, he followed me to the well, where I washed away the soil and a part of my life. He didn’t talk. He just stood there quietly, watching as I fell to my knees, weeping. Only after I had caught my breath did he offer me his hand.
I had been expecting him. I knew the day and time of his arrival. Upon touching his flesh, I knew, as well, that my family’s passing from the smallpox was only a single step in the direction my life was about to take. The destination remained as much a mystery as his identity.
One year ago to the day a rider had come to our home to deliver a sealed letter. As road-weary as his mount, we had offered him a meal and a night’s rest, his horse the stable and hay. He refused, saying he had far to travel. He was off again as quickly as he came. I had some work to be done, I recall. The hen house roof needed fixing and winter waited for no man. So, it was late in the evening, after supper, before I was able to sit by candlelight and read the missive he’d delivered.
The letter was short and to the point. It simply read:
Dear Mr. Huntington,
On the afternoon of December 23rd, 1776, a man will come to your home and submit to you a task. You will accept it and follow his instructions to the letter.
Sincerely,
Benj. Franklin
Th. Jefferson
There was no reason behind it, no threat of non-compliance. I could only stare at the letter in my hands and wonder if I was being made a fool. Why would two gentlemen, who surely have more important matters to attend to, take the time to write something so nonsensical? And why write it to me; a man turned away from the volunteer posts because of a childhood injury? A man with a cane and no military experience might as well be no man at all. Though I was certain it was some strange joke at my expense, I never destroyed it. Instead, I tucked it away, taking it out every now and then to gaze at it in speculation.
As I gazed at the truth standing before me today, I knew it to be no jest. The man was perhaps an inch shorter than I with grey eyes that seemed to never rest. He carried a leathern satchel under one arm. Under a bicorn hat his silver-peppered hair was clubbed back with a black ribbon. His attire wasn’t out of place for one traveling afoot, but then he seemed oddly unsoiled for one who must have traveled far. Even his shoes and stockings were unsullied by the muddy path to my house. Perhaps the man was simply fastidious. I took this all in just as he released his grip on my hand. His palm and fingers were softer than a woman’s. A statesman? Diplomat? Royalty from Spain or France? Again I had to wonder what he was doing here.
“Nathaniel Huntington?” the Stranger asked.
I couldn’t quite place the accent. A native of Philadelphia, likely. There were all sorts of people there, I’d heard – a cosmopolitan wonder.
“Yes?”
“May we step inside out of the wind?”
I didn’t think the early winter wind was that cold, but I agreed and took his coat once we were inside, hanging it on a hook near the door. I hung my cane beside it. He kept the satchel with him, while I lit a few candles from the hearth fire. I offered to warm some tea, but he declined. We seated ourselves on opposite sides of the table, which my father-in-law had fashioned as a wedding gift for me and my wife. I had made a feeble attempt with the chairs, but unlike her craftsman father, I couldn’t see the pattern in the wood. My wife loved them anyway, even when she had to place something beneath a leg or two to keep them steady.
The Stranger pulled at his cream-colored waistcoat, as if its woolen fabric bothered him. I saw it matched the coat I had hung, as well as his perfectly-fitted breeches. Again, I marveled at how newly tailored and clean his clothes were, but any such thoughts were cast aside when he spoke.
“Victory or death,” he said, resting his hands on the tabletop.
“Excuse me?” I asked.
“Have you heard of William Doyle’s Tavern?”
“Who hasn’t? My wife wants…” I swallowed back the sudden lump in my throat and did my best to ignore the aching cavity in my chest. “She wanted me to take her and little Constance there when our daughter was older. If the tales can be believed, a regular town is growing up around it.”
“Be there on the morrow by nightfall and pay for your supper with this.” He reached into a pocket of his waistcoat and slid across the table a chip of wood. Carved on its pentagonal surface was the likeness of a building I had never seen, fronted with proud pillars and circled by strange glyphs.
“When the moon has reached its zenith,” he continued, “step outside and go to the western woods. Wait there and you will meet someone. Once he arrives, leave your horse behind. Do not tarry! Leave at once and take the individual to McKonkey’s Ferry. There will be boats there. Take one and row him out on to the river. Do not speak to this individual. Do not even look at him if you can help it.”
I left the chip sitting on the table next to the burning candle. While outside the light faded, the darkness growing within my home had little to do with the setting sun.
“Why should I do this thing?” I asked.
“Do you love your world, Mr. Huntington?”
“My world? I don’t understand.”
“All that is and all that will be rests on your being at the ferry the night of what was once called Christmas.”
“It’s still called that so far as I know…” It dawned on me at that moment that I didn’t even know this man’s name. “What are you called, sir?”
“You may call me a friend.”
With that the man stood, setting the satchel on the table. “You’ll find garments within. It’s very important you wear them on your journey.” He turned and took his coat from the hook, opening the door. He stopped before leaving and stared at me for a long moment. For a man seemingly so sure of himself, he said something to me then even more peculiar than all the rest.
“If all goes as well as I recall, I may see you again….”
The door shut and I remained at the table, still sitting in the flickering light of the candles. I picked up the small wooden chip. Turning it over, I could see a many-armed spiral of tiny points. Within one arm of the spiral a single of these points appeared to be magnified in the shape of a radiant star. I couldn’t imagine what artist had achieved such detail.
I placed the chip back on the table and blew out the candles. I sat down in my wife’s rocking chair near the hearth, allowing the fire to warm my face. Only moments passed before I left the chair, returning a minute later from the bedroom with the scarf she had worn when we had gone picking blackberries a few months before. I fell asleep there to the scent of her, dreaming of my child, dreaming of my wife, and dreaming of a Stranger who came and took them both away.
The next morning found me on the road. I closed up the house, saddled the black mare my daughter called Boo, and rode out not long after dawn. A brisk wind with the smell of snow pushed me east. I glanced only once at the hill above my house. I told myself I would be back, but knew in my heart it wasn’t true.
Though feeling a bit odd doing so, I had donned the garments the man had left for me. They consisted of coat, breeches, waistcoat, and boots – all dyed darkest black. Or at least I assumed they were dyed. I had never seen or felt such material. I believed the boots were leather, but I couldn’t even be sure of that. In any event, it was warm and comfortable. As I had nothing like it, my shirt was white, gathered at the sleeves.
The man must have known Boo’s leisurely pace, for the sun was about to set behind me when I reached William Doyle’s Tavern. I had seen more and more homes as I approached the establishment and now found myself in a town larger than most I had visited in my twenty-nine years. More than a single story, the tavern was much larger than I expected, with a well in front and a stable in the back. For a half shilling, a stableboy happily took Boo, who in turn eagerly led the lad to the stable and food. I turned to the tavern where I could hear music and the boisterous banter of menfolk relaxing after a day’s work.
With my cane in hand, I entered and made my way to the bar thru a haze of tobacco smoke. Behind the counter a German glass mirror revealed a man staring back at me with vacant blue eyes, dark disheveled hair, and clothes the color of which stood him out from the crowd. I was every bit as exhausted as I looked. I was glad of the warmth provided by the large fireplace on the far end. I could take off my coat and relax.
An older gentleman, strumming a mandolin that had seen better days, sat near the fire singing. Many of the patrons were singing along with him, laughing with the bawdry chorus. It was a little louder here than I thought it would be, but I was sure my wife would have enjoyed the atmosphere. I inhaled the exotic scents and waved to the barkeep.
“William Doyle?”
A giant of a man, he rumbled, “No, no, I just work here, friend. William sold the place earlier this year. Mr. Swanwick owns it now, but he’s off somewhere across the river. You look hungry. If you want to find yourself a table, I’ll have some bread and roast brought out to you.”
When I thanked him and handed over the wood chip, he looked at me strangely for just a moment. After taking in my clothing, he nodded once and the chip vanished in his soiled apron. I found a table in the back, ate my meal to the melodies of an old English folksong, and nearly nodded off in my chair when the barkeep nudged me.
“The moon is rising,” he whispered in my ear.
I thanked him again and left, finding full night had fallen and the moon was, indeed, on the rise, nearly to its zenith. I hurried into the western woods. Unsure how far to go, I only went so deep that I could no longer hear the tavern behind me. I heard an owl hoot in the distance. The sounds and smells I had grown up with were all around me. With my back against the bark of a barren and leafless sugar maple, I waited.
I didn’t have to wait long. I heard a loud hiss and felt an odd pressure within my ears building, followed shortly by a snap as my ears popped. The woods had gone eerily still. The silence that followed lasted only a few moments before the nocturnal woodland sounds resumed. I thought then that my imagination had played a trick on me, but I turned and found a tall figure stood nearby cloaked and hooded in the darkness. The figure said nothing, not quite looking in my direction, but ostensibly waiting for me to say or do something.
I knew that the Stranger had told me not to talk to this person, but I felt I had to say something, if only out of courtesy. “My name is Nathaniel Huntington. I’m to take you to McKonkey’s Ferry.”
The figure didn’t reply, so I started off east, back thru town, my cane finding the least muddy path in the darkness, and quickly left the town and Boo behind. I wondered if I would see the old mare again. She was a good horse, but I felt there were those better than I that would keep her fed and exercised. Maybe another little girl, like Constance, would fall in love with her.
The figure kept a constant twenty paces behind me. I couldn’t see his face or even hear him breathing, as we walked thru the night. Where my bad leg eventually began to ache from the exertion, I felt that the figure behind me could walk endlessly, tirelessly.
At last I called a halt and we rested. The moon was yet high, if not so high as before. While I sat on a log alongside a road that was looking more and more used as we traveled, the silent figure stepped over the log and into the woods behind me. When he didn’t return, I grew curious and followed him. I found him a short distance away, huddled over what looked to me like a formation of tumbled stones. Though his hands were covered by the long sleeves of his cloak, I could tell he was tracing lines on the face of the rock. It was when the lines began to glow, that I nearly stumbled backward with a yell.
The lines moved and formed strange patterns under the moss and dirt that covered its ancient surface. After several minutes, the figure rose and the lines vanished, leaving the rock as cold and blank as any I had tossed out of my fields. The figure turned and seemed to wait for me again. The ice in my blood had little to do with the night’s temperature.
I wanted more than anything to leave that place, so we continued our journey, though I was hardly rested. I knew better than to ask what had happened. We hadn’t traveled far, though, before I had to stop, the breath freezing in my lungs. I could see lights in the sky — zipping hither and yon with abandon, leaving no trail like a comet, and stopping as quickly as they started. They were of all colors, some soaring alone while others dashed about in groups. Some even approached us, but all appeared harmless.
Before long the sun began to rise and the lights vanished one by one with the stars. With the sun’s rising came clouds from behind us. The wind began to pick up and the snow I had smelled yesterday became a sparse reality. Flakes here and there began to fall around us, off an on, thru the morning.
The day proved uneventful, as we progressed towards the Delaware River. I had to stop several times. Though I needed rest now and then, my charge never argued or even seemed in a hurry. A family traveling west offered us food of which I accepted. They warned us it wasn’t safe towards the river. Not only were there soldiers by the thousands flocking there, but mysterious lights were being seen in and around the Delaware – the Devil’s Lights they were being called. The man’s wife made a sign to ward off evil. I thanked them for their advice and to their dismay started once more towards the danger.
It was towards mid-afternoon that a shout brought us up short. We were quickly surrounded by soldiers aiming muskets at as with lethal intent. Many had bayonets and axes suspended from their baldrics, on their belts a cartridge box. The men looked dirty, tired, and ill at ease. How could I blame them, I wondered. It was Christmas Day. Most of these men had families waiting for them. The war had not been going well and morale was not high.
An officer on horseback circled us all, crying out, “What is the password?”
“Victory or death!” I shouted back. I can’t explain how those first words the Stranger had spoken came to me, but I was thankful that they did.
Instantly the muskets were lowered, the soldiers parting to allow the officer to approach. For a reason no one could explain, his horse would not allow him to get too close. I watched as he dismounted. “What is your business here? You don’t look like soldiers,” he said with a lingering look at the cloaked individual beside me, “but you knew the password. Are you here to see the general?”
“Yes.”
“Why does your tall friend hide his face and not speak?”
“The general gets his information from many sources. It wouldn’t do for some to be known,” I answered, hoping his sense of self-preservation would overcome his curiosity.
“Very well, we were on our way to the embarkation point. You may accompany us.” Back on his horse in a flash, he was off with nary a glance in our direction the rest of the journey. I let out the breath I didn’t know I was holding.
We joined the soldiers on their way and by three o’clock saw the river. Accustomed to the creeks and tributaries of where I grew up I was impressed by its width. I quickly stopped trying to count the soldiers both lined up and milling about the ferry point. Just as the Stranger had foretold, many boats were lined up along the shore; some full of men already on their way across. At this rate, the moon would be up again before I could acquire a craft.
A man approached us, saying, “I was told to tell you that General Washington is already across securing our landing site.”
“That’s fine,” I replied. “My information can wait until nightfall.” As simple as that, we were forgotten.
It turned out that it was long after nightfall when we acquired our boat. Earlier, the wind had picked up fiercely and hail and sleet had begun to fall in earnest. We could barely see the river let alone our craft. My companion – I wondered if he had a name – climbed aboard. Totally unfamiliar with what I was doing, I managed to get over the gunwale without falling into the freezing water. A few soldiers looked about to board with us, but I gave them a level stare and shook my head. Something in my eyes and the silence of my cloaked companion must have turned them away. We set out immediately; I rowing, my friend sitting as quiet and complacent as ever.
We lost sight of land almost immediately. Soon enough the lights I remembered from last night returned. This time, though, I could see their murky glow under the water and ice floes around us. I looked at my companion and wondered why I had been told to bring him here. As if he read my mind, he reached out and touched my hand gripping the oar. I did not feel fingers. Images sprang into my mind and when he released me, I knew.
He stood in the boat without so much as rocking it. His cloak dropped away and I saw him in his true form. I wasn’t as prepared as I thought I would be at the sight of him. After all that had happened, that he wasn’t even human seemed somehow fitting. I had assumed, however, that he walked on two legs, but found there were three. They were stumpy and short. His torso was long and slender, reminding me of a snake, his head was mostly tentacles, his arms the same. I could make out a single black eye gazing at me. He then looked out over the waves and began to glow, the hail and sleet melting before it reached him. There was a humming and the lights below us rose up out of the water. For several minutes my companion and what I could now clearly see was some sort of airborne vessel seemed to stare at one another, possibly communicating in a way I didn’t comprehend.
Perhaps it was his earlier touch upon my hand that allowed me to inadvertently get a glimpse of what was silently transpiring on the Delaware River on this cold December night. I could hear no words, but again images began streaming through my mind. A green world under a lavender sky. Beautiful sprawling cities like crystalline formations reflecting two suns in multifaceted brilliance. A landscape dotted with these formations with a single eye towards beauty. Over it all I sensed harmony. Every aspect of this world was at peace. There were no wars. There was no bloodshed over such primitive ideas as religion, money, and politics. A biological rapport on a planetary scale.
And here was the rub.
The species that lived so harmoniously on this world was even now about to exterminate that of Earth’s. On a galactic scale, their home was very close to my world. Such was their love for theirs, that they would destroy mine. They could not abide the thought of such a barbaric, bloodthirsty race existing so near to them. One day we may find a way to reach out and take what was theirs.
I sensed then that the attention of the vessel was on me. I began to see more familiar images. Memories of my childhood, some I had no way of remembering on my own, were revealed to them like pages in a book. I saw my mother holding me to her breast for the first time. I saw myself fishing with my father on a warm summer’s day. I felt the awkwardness of my first kiss with a neighbor girl behind the woodshed. I experienced again my heart bursting with new and strange feelings the day I met Elizabeth. Even the joy that came from the birth of my daughter was exposed.
Suddenly, I became aware of my surroundings again. Once more I was on a boat with a being not of Earth. The vessel was now directly overhead. There was no sound, only three pulsing red lights, shining at its corners. Its shape reminded me of a Sasquehannock arrowhead, but the lights moved as if the object were not quite solid. My companion looked at me and I sensed pleasure and a conclusion of hostilities. With a flash of light he and the craft were gone. I was alone.
This wasn’t a night to drift out to the Delaware Bay so I turned the boat landward (or so I hoped) and rowed. I made landfall and, cold and weary, found the encampment that the general’s forces had just left. It was mostly deserted, with only a few men here and there, finishing up the tedious task of breaking down the command tents and putting out the various campfires lit along the shore. I made the nearest campfire my own and huddled under a blanket left behind by a soldier. With the warmth of the flames on my back, I fell into a light slumber, trying to somehow piece together and make sense all of which I had been made witness.
It seemed only moments had passed when a sound caught my ears that woke me. I had heard it once before in the western woods outside William Doyle’s Tavern. The pressure in my ears was more intense this time. I sat up, the cold forgotten, and watched as a hole expanded in the air just a few paces from me. I can explain it no other way. Like a whirlpool one sees in a river, the air collapsed into a vortex and an opening to elsewhere expanded. Daylight spilled thru and a man stepped out. When the hole retracted there was a snap. By campfire light, I knew who it was.
“Hello, Nathaniel, I see you followed the instructions I’ll give you.”
Figuring that last was a misstatement, I blurted out the first questions that came to me, “Where were you? What was that?”
“That was a portal,” he answered, crouching next to me. “And to answer your first question: in the future, Nathaniel. By the Gregorian calendar I was just in the year 2603. I think you’re ready now for me to tell you more of what part you’ll play in the constant battle to keep this world alive.”
I knew it was ludicrous, the words he was saying, but I could see clearly enough that the man before me, though he be the same man as he who came to my house not more than a day ago, was a good thirty years younger. Gone was the pepper in his hair, gone were the fine clothes. He now wore what I could only describe as a one-piece garment of the same material as the coat and other garments he had given me.
“Who are you?” I asked for lack of a better question.
“I didn’t give you my name? I’m not surprised. I can be a bit brusque and melodramatic in my later years. My name is Tholyn. At least that’s what I go by these days.” He offered me his hand which I took and found to be rougher and more callused than his older counterpart. “Though I work for an organization more than 800 years in the future, I was born in Rome under the rule of Augustus. Destined to die in the arena, I was recruited by a being that took human shape. She was of a race older than man. At the time it was simply a choice between freedom and eventual, though certain, death. It was no choice at all.”
“Why was I chosen to do this thing? I don’t even have a real trade.” I shook the cane in his direction. “All I have is this!”
“That,” he said, pointing at the cane, “can be fixed. It’s the very fact that you have no trade, have no true bearing on the future, which led us to you.”
When I said nothing, only stared, he continued, “I know all about you Nathaniel Huntington. You were born July 25th, 1747 in the house of your mother and father not three day’s walk from here. You have no brothers or sisters. You need the cane because of a riding accident when you were nine years old. At the age of seventeen you married Elizabeth Hall. After many years of trying, your daughter Constance was born. Both she and your wife died of smallpox contracted from British deserters who forced themselves into your home while you were away selling produce in the nearest town.”
I looked away from him, fighting down the bile that had risen in my throat. I would not think of that day! I could not! Less than a month ago I was away. Just for a few hours! I wasn’t even going to go to town that day! I could have been home. But we needed a few things and I never thought anything would happen…what would happen?…nothing should happen…
“What do you need of me?” I asked, my voice sounding strange even to my own ears.
“There are wars being fought, Nathaniel. Wars much like the revolution for which your country is fighting, only on a much grander scale. A scale that crosses time and worlds beyond counting.
“That individual you were charged to guide here, as I’m sure you are now well aware, is not human. He is of a long-lived species called the Kezdin. In the future, where he is from, they are one of Earth’s closest allies, helping us keep the timelines intact and this world from being conquered or, worse yet, destroyed altogether. However, prior to the 19th century and the treaty forged by President Thomas Jefferson, this was not so. They attempted several times to destroy this planet. Through you, though, the Kezdin of this time saw that the human species is not a species to be feared and wiped out. They saw an ability to love.” With a wry smile, Tholyn said, “Your heart, Nathaniel, saved this world.
“Unfortunately, other species do not see as clearly as the Kezdin,” he continued. “The worldwide extinction of the dinosaurs. The black plague of the 13th century. The Nazi ‘Bell’ Project during World War II that later crashed in Kecksburg, Pennsylvania in 1965. The Carancas impact event in Peru in the very early 21st century. That was the beachhead for an airborne species that attempted to implode the world by means of the Hadron Collider under the Franco-Swiss border. All these were of species bent on annihilating the human race.”
I didn’t understand half of what he had just said, but asked, “Surely, they’re not all evil?”
“I don’t think any are evil, Nathaniel, not in their own minds at least, but no, they’re not all out to kill us. Some have even advanced the human race. The invention of the wheel. The pyramids of Egypt and ziggurats of South America. From the invention of cell phones to the invention of time travel, from Velcro to the first Dyson sphere built in the late 43rd century, we were helped a good bit along the way.”
“Why must I wear the black garments?”
“The material in your clothing protects you from certain forms of radiation emitted by some species as well as their craft – the Kezdin being among them.” When he saw that I again didn’t understand, he explained, “Exposure to them repeatedly over long periods of time can cause us to become sick and die.”
He laughed, saying, “During the mid to late 20th and even into the early 21st centuries there will be a mythology of sorts about people like you and I.”
I took a deep breath, doing my best to accept it all. “I have so many questions,” I whispered.
“I’ll do my best to answer them,” he replied with a smile. “You deserve it.”
“I saw lights in the sky. They were not of this world, were they?” I asked.
“No, but they were curious about your friend.”
He went on to answer questions I hadn’t even thought to ask. Yes, Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson knew of his organization, hence the letter sent to me a year ago. The latter would be a president, though Tholyn forgot to tell me of what. I would have my leg fixed within a few hours. And, of course, before my next assignment, I should expect some official training. The glowing rocks I had seen along the way? An ancient intersection of ley lines used by pre-human races for travel and worship. The Kezdin was likely marking our progress.
“Do you know what my next assignment will be?” I asked.
“1587, Roanoke Island, we believe an extraterrestrial creature called the Mord may have infiltrated a colony there. Not every assignment will be of earth-shattering proportions.”
Tholyn stood and suddenly the hiss of a portal beckoned. He stretched out his hand to me and asked, “Nathaniel Huntington, are you ready to join?”
I stood up and took his hand. His answers only served to prompt more questions that burned to be asked, but I said, “You mentioned that in about two hundred years there will be a mythology about our organization.” For some reason this intrigued me.
He reached out and ran his hand down the lapel of my coat.
“They will call us the ‘Men in Black.’”
About the Author
Mark Bailey has been reading science fiction, fantasy, and horror for as long as he can remember. Inspired by the heroic fiction of Robert E. Howard and Karl Edward Wagner, the science fiction of Isaac Asimov, and the epic fantasy of Robert Jordan, he travelled through time and across the cosmos, eventually putting his imagination to paper (or keyboard). People are always asking him where he gets his ideas. Simply, he writes what he enjoys reading, hoping in the meantime that maybe, just maybe, someone else out there in the world will enjoy it too.
©2010 Mark F. Bailey
