Two Wrongs Finally Make Aright - Part II

The compact disc player in the upstairs sitting room suddenly came on. The sound brought Stephen out of his real-time dream of tuft-haired aliens landing on the octagonal deck in the back yard. The voices of Anonymous 4 sang out in adoration of St. Nickolai calling out, “Nickolai, Nickolai,” so real that he expected to see gifts fly over the transom of the outer doorway. He punched the Zen chime-clock. 3:00 am. He threw off the sheet and looked around the room. “What the . . ?” he mumbled. “What the . .? was one of his favorite sayings that he used in public or social situations to express wonderment but this time it was a real “What the . .?” The three clocks with digital temperature gauges were glowing on the desk. The Kachinas were rearranged from their original positions, now facing the door to the outer balcony. They, too, were glowing with a kind of a lime-ish green foggy color. Their features were more clearly defined and their eyes shown black with a star-shaped point of light in the center. There was a steady knocking at the door. Darjeeling had always known that he would be faced with this situation, so fear was not a factor in his next decision. He went out of the bedroom and around the corner to the great room where he could see both the octagonal deck and the outer balcony of the bedroom. There at the door were two tuft-haired aliens and there were more on the deck, walking out of a foggy, green beam of light that emanated from the octagonal center of the octagonal deck. The two immediately turned and looked at him, their three inch diameter shiny, black eyes emitting beams of light from their star-pointed centers. Darjeeling ran back into the bedroom and went straight for the door, taking a final breath before opening it. As he opened the screen door, he bumped them and they turned the eye beams on him, pushing him back gently, two eight pointed stars lighting his bare chest, pushing him back toward the center of the room. He put out his hand and an eight pointed star pushed it back. He started to speak and another eight pointed star covered and closed his lips. The two went toward the Kachinas moving across the floor on a pedestal of the green glowlight. Whichever way the one went the other went also and if the one turned, the other also turned casting the glowlight about them and illuminating objects in the room with the eight pointed stars. The stars seemed to stick to Stephen and the other objects in the room. He could still move but whenever he did, the two would look at him and he could feel the star pressure on his chest. He began to look at them more closely to determine their structure and appearance. He heard them making some sound but it was nothing that registered with him. They seemed to be looking up toward the upper room where the CD player was and he thought he heard one of them say something like “Nee-cho-Eli.” Then the player went silent. He heard the Kustom amp power up and saw the red light come on on the ten position equalizer on the Les Paul Wannabe. The strings began to vibrate, playing the blues runs he had last played. The Zen chime clock gonged three times, then three more times, then three times again. He heard a commotion at the outer balcony door and saw more of them riding the glowlight up to the doorway, gliding into the room and giving out a vibration that was part sound, part light wave, and part air pressure. The sound began to take on the characteristics of other sounds in or near the room. He heard one of them make a sound sort of like a dog bark and partially recognized the sound that his dog Browne made whenever a train went by in the distance. A couple of them seemed to be vocalizing “Nee-cho-Eli, Nee-cho-Eli.” They all looked lovingly at the Kachinas.
Darjeeling looked at them more closely. His heart was heavily beating and his breath raced in and out. They, too, watched him intently. He thought to himself about how beautiful their appearance was to him. He began to feel a sense of peaceful wonder. The soft, green glowlight filled the room and the eight pointed stars punctuated the objects there. All of them appeared similar in structure but were of different sizes, some larger and taller than others, none of them seemed to be any taller than four and a half or five feet tall. Proportionally, their “thickness” was about one third that of their height, so if one was three feet tall, it would be one foot thick. They, for the most part were cylindrical and were supported on a pedestal of the glowlight that was brighter than the glowlight they cast and which extended out from them about four inches from the base of their main body. The pedestal base made up about one foot of their height regardless of their overall stature and was translucent. They left no indication of a trail or of any kind of print or pressure on the carpeted floor. Their main distinguishing features were the enormous, black shiny eyes with the starpoints and the three tufts of hair coming out of the top of their head which made up about half of their height. The end of the body and the beginning of the head was marked by a change in color. Their body from glowlight pedestal to where the head began was a lusterless black which seemed to be a covering something like suede leather. In fact, Darjeeling thought it might be a cloak of some sort as it moved back and forth over the green pedestal as they moved about the room. At the top of this cloak there was a collar of sorts with a pinpoint of light where an Earth human’s adam’s apple might be. A small inch high indentation was all that demarcated the change from body to head and at the top of this indentation the head rose straight up in line with the body except for a three inch thick covering of the glowlight which covered all of the head except for the large, round eyes. There was no indication of mouth, nose, or ears, only barely perceptible holes in the glowlight which were conical and extended toward the head through the light, ending at a one quarter inch diameter eight pointed white star. These stars roughly coincided with the Earth human location of ears, nose, and mouth and rotated one way and then the other periodically sending out beams of white light in random order according to their locale on the head. There were no discernible hands or arms on the cylindrical, flat black body, but again there were areas of the glowlight which highlighted the body and which were able to extend outwardly from the body in any direction. These were not tentacles but more like light beams which had the characteristic white star on the end. Darjeeling watched as the light beam from one emanated toward the oldest and tallest Kachina and attached itself by brightening the white star. The Kachina underwent a dramatic transformation from a solid lifeless form to a vibrant being which seemed to Darjeeling to now have lifelike qualities.