Free Encounters 1: The Spiral Slayers by Rusty Williamson Page A

communicate
with them…at first anyway. You’re authorized to tell Adamarus about all the
messages we’ve received from them.” Leewood said, “Okay,” and the congressman
hung up.
    ---
     Many had heard Adamarus recount his strange dream which he
only partially remembered: his wife and son, his friend Radin, and also many nurses
and doctors. All this had filtered up to others who had come and questioned him
about it. Eventually, someone decided that this might be much more than a dream
and so Dr. Kallen came to him one day with many different experts: a hypnotist,
interrogators, sketch artists and a computer graphics expert—all with security
clearance to know about Adamarus. They told Adamarus that they wanted to place
him under deep hypnosis in order to get all the details his mind retained of
this dream. And they told him what they thought the dream might really be.
     Upon hearing their suspicions, Adamarus realized that he too
had suspected the same so he agreed, but with one condition—that they bring
those memories back to his conscious mind. The doctors countered with a
compromise: they would allow him to access all that they learned from him under
hypnosis, and then, if they thought it would be wise to give him back those
memories, they would put him under again and it would be done. He agreed and
they went to work at once.
    He went under easily and they took him to the deepest levels.
Slowly they took him back in time. And when they reached it, they knew at once
that they had been right. From his subconscious mind, Adamarus recounted
everything in great detail. They got it all—from exactly what the Loud looked
like, to how they moved and sounded. They got details about the inside of the
ship and what various machines had looked like. Even if Adamarus had
consciously remembered everything with complete clarity, they got details he didn’t
realize he had.
    “Adamarus, what was behind the moving hills?”
    “Dark arches that stretched up as far as you could see.”
    “What else?”
    “That’s all.”
    “Think of those arches, Adamarus. Think about how they looked
at the lowest level you see.”
    “Okay.”
    “What do you see?”
    “Dark arches.”
    “Good. And what do you see inside those arches, Adamarus?”
    “Another large room…one that lies beyond the arches.”
    “Good. And what do you see in that room beyond the arches?”
    “Video screens. Lots of video screens. They’re mounted on the
ceiling, facing downward.”
    “Focus on the televisions. What do you see?”
    “I see two…no…three…all three of the news stations. A Talk
show— the one called AM/PM.”
    “Anything else?”
    “No. Can’t quite see the other screens. They are angled away
from me.”
    “What do you see under the televisions?”
    “Darkness.”
    “And what is below the darkness?”
    “Hills. Vast numbers of hills – the moving hills. They are
watching.”
    “You mean hills like the ones around you, in the room that
you are in?”
    “Yes, the same.”
    “These hills, they aren’t really hills, are they?”
    “No. That’s what I thought they were at first.”
    “What are they?”
    “The hills are the aliens. The aliens are nothing like us. Nothing
like us.”
    And so it went for hour after hour.
    Over the next few days, several things happened: Adamarus
kept improving, the structure rising in front of the Loud’s ship became a large
dome, and the multitude of people surrounding the town continued to swell.
    Adamarus’ smaller alien bandages had fallen off and his
largest bandages had turned gray, a sure sign that they would follow suit
shortly. His apparent age remained unchanged.
    ---
    It was a miserable night. Gusts of freezing wind whipped the
icy rain and hail into projectiles that pounded against the sides of the
special team’s trailers. Like the snow, it passed right through the force field.
On the ground, the snow which had fallen the day before was turning into a
dirty slush.
    Leewood