Hole in the Sky -2- Into the Hole (Patreon)

The hole in the sky seemed closer now, bigger than an outstretched hand with fingers spread wide and now we could hear it, too. It sounded like, well, like a vacuum cleaner the size of the moon might sound. The General's profane metaphor seemed less than totally far-fetched.

"Do you feel that wind?" asked Dunn. His voice might have had a tremble in it or it might have just been the wind.

We all felt it, a breeze had grown to branch-bending intensity. It didn't help any of us feel safe. All around, our looked-for green solitude seemed less like a haven and more like a trap.

I turned back to the radio, trying again to find some transmission, any transmission. Every frequency on the radio held nothing but static.

Doc slumped against the side of the SUV looking sick, his pale complexion turning yellow. Dunn's big, freckled hands made washing motions as he stared first at the black diamond in the sky, then at the radio, then at me. Knots bulged in Hatton's cheeks and if it hadn't been for radio static and wind noise, I knew I could have heard his teeth grinding.

When the static suddenly surged then stopped, we all stared at the machine for a long moment. ”The radio's useless," Hatton finally said. "Let's get back in the truck, out of this wind."

By the time we'd got back into our seats, the hole in the sky had doubled again, now taking up an arc of nearly twenty degrees. I'd left the engine running but it had died and would not restart. After a few tries, I gave up, hoping that it might start easily later. I had some vague idea that electromagnetic disturbances could cause such problems from seeing some old sci-fi movie.

"Aliens?" suggested Dunn. He must have seen the same flick.

Doc nodded but the General snorted. "You'd probably enjoy being anally probed."

Dunn flushed and we all snickered nervously. Considering our “hobby” and why we were in the North Woods in the first place, it was fairly funny, if a little bit mean.

But such comments were supposed to be off limits, and it fell to me to remind the General of the rules. I sat half-turned in the seat where I could see everyone, and not have to look out the front windshield where the edge of the black diamond was now easily visible. "No sniping," I warned. "If we survive this, we're all going to need each other."

They nodded, looking a bit relieved. Wilderness survival was my business and they all recognized me as the voice of authority, even the General.

Doc attracted our attention, pointing. "Is that a bear?"

We looked. Coming up the track from the river, a worried-looking bruin stopped when he noticed the SUV.

"Lock the doors," snapped the general. Not a bad idea but the electric door locks didn't work and it took all of us a moment to remember to use the old-fashioned mechanical buttons.

"Let's hope he doesn't have a coat hanger," said Doc.

We snickered again while the bear gave our silvery refuge a wide berth, still heading toward the saddle of Perdition Ridge.

"Maybe we should follow Mr. Grizzly," suggested Dunn.

I shook my head, not bothering to point out that the bear had been one of the smaller common black bears, not a half ton of rare and endangered grizzly. "We've got equipment and supplies here, we shouldn't leave them. Let's belt ourselves in."

We'd just finished doing so when the black diamond doubled again, now covering half the sky and seeming to hover only tens of feet above us. Howling winds rocked the truck, and gravel and small branches pelted the sides and windows. A few smaller pieces of debris disappeared upward into the looming black maw, dwindling rapidly as they passed the rainbow edges. A few small animals and more than a few birds flew upward into nothingness, too.

"My wife," muttered the General. I'd seen her picture; a pleasantly plump blonde in her mid-fifties, Mrs. Hatton probably had steel to match the General's and I didn't doubt that she would survive without him.

"My kids," whispered Doc. I knew he wasn't married and that he meant the three generations of children he had helped bring into the world. "I try to keep track of all of them; they'll wonder why they don't get a card from me this Christmas." I put out my hand and he clasped it firmly, then patted it as if he were comforting me.

Dunn prayed quietly in his corner, not imposing his conversation with his God on the rest of us but I caught a few words now and then. "Lord," I heard him pray, "prepare us for the next world and receive our souls into Your Glory."

I thought about my parents whom I had not seen in several years, about all of the other men I had guided on these private wilderness journeys, about friends and lovers I might never see again.

When it happened, it happened quickly. I remember a change in the sound then the blackness rushed at us. We all knew the next expansion of the hole might be the last but none of us were really prepared for the sensation of falling through the hole in the sky. It felt exactly like dropping into a pit as deep as eternity.

We probably all screamed. I know I did.

The falling sensation intensified, as if the big SUV had gone over a cliff. My stomach had that empty sensation you get as the roller coaster tops the hill and starts down. At the same time, visually, the car seemed to be lifting into the air with clunks and rattles and shifting of the supplies in the cargo area. The mismatch in sensations, visually rising while my body insisted we were falling produced a nearly violent desire to vomit.

I swallowed down bile as the darkness swallowed us; the biggest, brightest darkness I had ever experienced, shot through with enormous gold and purple lightnings. A vivid blue green light danced around the outside mirrors, windshield washers and the edge of the hood. Bright slashes of red and twists of green fell like confetti around us. Later, I would remember the "psychedelic" sequences from Kubrick's 2001 but really it was nothing like those.

Hatton cursed, Dunn prayed and Doc and I simply howled, all of us convinced we were about to die. We had belted ourselves into our seats or in the momentary weightlessness of whatever force had seized the vehicle we would probably have been thrashing around in panic.

Ten times as fast as it had begun the light-and-dark show ended and all our senses now agreed, we were falling.

We didn't fall far, out of darkness into a night filled with stars.

The big SUV bounced on its springs and our shrieking abruptly cut off as we realized we were still alive. Dunn choked off sobs and scrubbed his face with his hands. Doc bit the side of his palm and looked sideways at me from under his shaggy brows. I couldn't see Hatton sitting behind me but I could hear him swallowing repeatedly.

I wiped my own face with the back of my hand and looked around.

A dark but starlit sky arched overhead and big shaggy-looking trees marched on either side of a dimly lit trail. Not quite the trail we had been on, that had been in a wide rocky clearing on the slope of the valley wall, this one was deep in a forest and in the bottom of a depression.

I gasped and swallowed. The feeling of anti-climax seemed at least as big as the hole had been.

"Is everyone all right?" I asked when I could speak.

"I think I'm crazy but other than that, I'm okay," said Doc beside me. He chuckled a little maniacally but when I glanced at him, he just shook his head, smiling. “I really am okay and I’m having trouble believing it.”

“Got that,” agreed Hatton from the back.

“Sho’ nuff,” Dunn chimed in. “Nothin’ wrong with me clean underwear won’t fix.”

I snorted and nodded. I felt fine, too, but had a little worry about our vehicle. Bouncing on the springs had been an anti-climax after the light show, but the big Lincoln couldn’t have fallen far, maybe only a foot or so, or we would be more shook-up. We really were okay.

Dim greenish light came from the dashboard, I had evidently turned the engine off and left the key on accessories when I tried the radio the last time. The lights were back on, which meant the engine might start now.

I looked up at the mirror to see the other two leaning forward.

"Praise the Lord," said Dunn. The freckles on his normally optimistic face stood out like inkblots but he sounded normal.

"We're all fine," said the General. His own scattering of freckles didn't even show in the darkness against his coffee complexion. "Will the truck start?" he asked with only a slight break in his voice.

I tried it. The engine roared to life with internal lights and automatic headlamps showing us the track winding through closely spaced trees.

"Let's get the heck outta here," Dunn suggested.

Everyone agreed and I put it in gear, edging carefully forward. No one said anything about the Hole in the Sky, our obvious change in location or the missing hours between late afternoon and full night. I drove in silence for several minutes, picking a way between, around or sometimes over the obstacles.

Finally, Dunn burst into suppressed giggles. Hatton snarled, "What the hell is so funny?"

"We're alive," said Dunn. Then we all laughed, enjoying the joke. It took some time for the snorts and chuckles to trail off into silence again.

I drove a little further until trees and boulders blocked further progress. "Let's stop here," I said. "I don't want to have to backtrack in the dark."

No one objected. I shut the engine off and turned the key far enough that the dashlights went off, too. We sat there in the dark, letting our eyes adjust. I knew we weren't in Lost Frenchman Valley anymore; the trees here were ancient growth with no trace of logging. Why then the rutted track we had been following, I wondered? And where had it disappeared to?

"Let's try the radios," suggested Doc.

I nodded, turned the key back to Accessories and flicked on the dashboard radio first. Nothing, not even static on any of the bands, AM, or FM.

Taking a deep breath, I got out of the truck after looking around carefully. The air didn't smell like the North Woods but it did remind me of something. Sweet, spicy with a hint of moldy soil, a rich, nose-filling smell--I thought of the Texas Big Bend Country after a spring rain--something like that but more exotic.

Shaking off speculation, I walked back to the rear hatch to try the more sophisticated communications gear there. The forgotten antenna that Dunn had put on the roof had fallen off and been dragged to destruction behind the SUV without any of us noticing.

I decided the remaining wires would serve as adequate antenna for a trial but all accessible frequencies were as empty as the commercial bands had been. Only one narrow shortwave band had any activity at all, a mysterious rhythmic hum--like the carrier wave on God's Own Frequency.

While I messed with the radio, the General set up a rough camp, removing equipment from the SUV and directing the others in building a firepit out of found stones. Sleeping bags were unrolled and arranged under the vehicle, not a bad idea. He also distributed a rifle and a box of shells to each of us, not necessarily a good idea but understandable. When I gave up on the radio, I discovered Dunn staring up at the sky. A few clouds hid some of the stars but I found the Big Dipper easily and from there Polaris.

"It's September, ain't it?" Dunn asked.

"It was," I agreed. We both stood there staring at Orion. The Hunter had no business being where he was in a September sky, not in such weather, nor so high. If this was still September, still Montana, Orion should be rising in the east a couple of hours before dawn. We didn't really have any idea which way was east without a look at the compass in the truck but that familiar set of stars was just wrong.

"Even the angle of his dangle ain't right," mused Dunn. We explained our misgivings to the other two but they were both city-born and didn't quite get it.

"Spooky," agreed Doc.

"We're alive," the General said, dismissing other worries.

Being alive trumped a lot of the uneasiness we all felt; falling through the Hole in the Sky had felt too much like dying. We all nodded at him and he humphed his satisfaction.

I took over building the fire, more for morale than warmth or light, while Doc used the propane stove to heat canned stew and water for instant coffee. We did a lot of talking, most of it pointless, and made a lot of guesses, most of them wrong.

Hatton did a good job of making a decision tree for us. "Either what happened was natural or it wasn't. If not natural, it must either be supernatural or artificial," he said. Dunn was the only holdout for supernatural, the rest of us considered the Hole in the Sky to be something artificial. None of us could think of any category of natural the phenomenon could fit under.

The General continued with his mental diagramming. "If what happened was artificial, it was either manmade, by humans, or not."

We considered that. Doc said, "Not by any humans we know of, so they might as well be aliens."

"Or angels," put in Dunn, still holding out for the supernatural.

Hatton snorted. "Or alien angels, what difference would it make? Nothing and no one any of us know of could have done that."

We all nodded.

"We got any hooch?" asked Dunn suddenly.

To unanimous approval, I broke out a fifth of Jack Daniels and we all poured a jigger in our cups, Doc adding his to his instant coffee. The General and I watched him and exchanged a mutual shudder, a rare moment of alignment for us.

"I approve of this sort of spirits," said Doc.

"Amen," agreed Dunn, tossing half of his portion back in one swallow.

"Okay," said the General, "now that we have fortified body and soul, let us return to the discussion." No one protested so he took the floor. "If the Hole in the Sky was artificial, then was it an accident or purposeful?"

"I don't think we can know that," said Doc.

"Maybe we can't," said Hatton. "But if it was an accident, then probably no one is looking for us to be here. And if was on purpose, then what purpose? Is there someone watching us right now?"

"I don't think it was an accident," I said. "That thing came straight at us, or at least, it looked like it did. And nothing came through with us, just the vehicle and its contents, some debris and a few small animals."

"Us," said Doc. "Someone wanted us?"

"Maybe."

"Let's leave that for a minute," said the General. "Next question: where is here?"

"And when," added Dunn. "That ain't no September sky up there."

Hatton nodded, conceding the point. "And it's too warm for us to still be in Montana."

"Is this even the Earth?" asked Doc.

"I think so," I put in. "The air and gravity feel right. I haven't seen any alien looking plants--I don't recognize these trees but they're pine trees of some sort—and even if that is the wrong sky up there, it's still an Earth sky."

"Time travel?" said Doc.

"No moon," said Dunn.

"Time travel is just a guess," said Hatton. "And the moon may not be out tonight, it would have been back where we came from but…but the upshot is, we've likely been brought here by someone for some reason we don't yet understand." While he sat there across the fire from me with his .308 hunting rifle across his knees, the firelight painted his face in ominous reds.

We all nodded.