Time to Time: Ashton Ford, Psychic Detective (Ashton Ford Series) (9 page)

Chapter Fifteen:
 
A Little Cloud That
Tried

It is very hard for
the thinking mind to settle around something like this. Even coming into it
with the mind totally open, even with considerable investigation and research
behind you, when the human mind is confronted with genuine phenomena the very
strong tendency is most usually to try to explain it in conventional terms. It
is no wonder that the scientist becomes so closed-minded and protective of the
status quo; the whole movement of mind seems directed toward preserving its own
baselines and allowing the addition of new information in carefully stepped
increments and with great discrimination. This is indeed the scientific method,
so one bolsters the other in the effort to keep reality within closely defined
bounds.

What
we mean by the term "mind-blowing" is that some radical new
perception is threatening the base structure of the reality-model that we carry
around inside our heads. We apparently need that base structure in order for
the mind to function per its design, to compare the present with the past, and
make intelligent decisions based on that comparison.

When
something comes along to "blow away" that base structure, then with what
do we compare that event in order to decide its meaning intelligently? Right;
no comparison is possible, so the natural tendency is to scale down the event
to a comparative level.

That
is what the normal mind does, and there are many brilliant automatic techniques
built in to help us do that.

So
you find yourself wondering if you really saw or heard or felt or otherwise
experienced what you thought you did. You question the validity of the
experience because that is how you keep in touch with your model of reality.
And you can become highly creative in constructing rationalizing arguments that
reduce apparent phenomena to a level comfortable for the mind.

So
although I was probably ninety-eight percent absorbed into this experience, a
very stubborn two percent of intellect was still trying to argue that it was
not really happening. Something else was happening and I just was not seeing it
in its true light. Soon, I would. Soon, I would tumble to some new explanation
to make the whole thing entirely mundane and manageable.

Manageable,
aha. There's the key to that whole two percent attitude. We humans like to have
at least the illusion that we are in control and running things. We are a
species that has come to life with the apparent ability to manipulate our
environment and bring the world to us on our own terms. We feel strongest and
safest when we are doing that, weak and defenseless when we cannot. That's the
whole story of relationships between mankind, is it not? Who is in charge here?

If
the flying saucers are for real, then obviously someone else or something else
might be in charge. Many of us are not willing to relinquish that kind of power
even to God.

This
was my thinking as I sat my lonely vigil in the Maserati outside the Laker
estate, and I give it to you here to show that I was trying to handle the
problem with a thinking mind, that I was not totally subjective about the
experience.

Because
a lot of crazy things began happening almost immediately thereafter.

The
usual morning fog was moving onshore, and Brentwood is not that far from the
Pacific. Actually Brentwood is one of the posh Los Angeles neighborhoods
sitting west of Beverly Hills and north of Santa Monica, sort of nestled into
the foothills behind Pacific Palisades (Ronald Reagan's ex-home). There
appeared to be about a fifty-foot ceiling over this particular area, with
occasional drifting patches right down on the deck. I had to work the wipers
occasionally to keep the windshield clear.

I
had been there for nearly half an hour, parked about a hundred feet off the
property, when I noticed a peculiar shift in the layer directly above the Laker
house. An irregular-shaped piece broke out of the base of the clouds and gently
settled toward the house. It came to rest no more than ten feet above the roof,
sort of flattened out on the bottom and top, and quietly spread itself over the
entire house. It looked like fog to me but I had never seen anything like that
kind of formation with any fog I'd ever seen. Living at Malibu, I see a lot.

After
a minute or so, the bottom edge began unraveling into long streamers that
totally engulfed the house in a matter of seconds. I sat stupidly watching, and
wondering what kind of environmental forces would make a pocket of fog act like
that. I kept expecting it to dissipate but it did not dissipate, so after
another minute or two I ventured from the car and went down for a closer look.

I
have been into some pretty heavy paranormal stuff, which you already know if
you've been following my cases, but I have to tell you that this event ranked
very high on my eeriness meter. I could not even see the house now, although
other houses nearby were clearly visible, as well as closely bordering trees
and shrubs. The outer lawn in front was visible, but it and the sidewalk and
the driveway extended for only about ten feet before absolutely disappearing
behind the fog bank. I know that for a fact because I stepped straight along
that sidewalk expecting the visibility to rise with me as I went along into it,
but it did not. I stepped through a curtain of fog and straight into another
world. And now I desperately needed my two-percent objectivity.

A
very interesting story from World War I, which I briefly mentioned earlier,
deserves to be told in detail at this point because it is a close parallel to
my own experience that night in Brentwood so may help the credibility factor
here just a bit.

The
event was reported by numerous professional observers but dismissed on the spot
and all eyewitness accounts buried in secret document files until recently when
a group of surviving observers demanded on the fiftieth anniversary (during the
UFO age) that it be publicly reported.

The
incident is referred to as "the vanishing regiment" and it occurred
in August 1915, during the Dardanelles Campaign near the Hirkish seaport of
Gallipoli. The regiment that vanished was the British First Fourth Norfolk,
which had been dispatched to reinforce the troops at Hill 60. The phenomenon
was witnessed by twenty-two men of an ANZAC force, three of whom signed the
following affidavit on the occasion of their Fiftieth Jubilee:

The day broke clear
without a cloud in sight, as any beautiful Mediterranean day could be expected
to be. The exception, however, was a number of perhaps six or eight "loaf
of bread" shaped clouds—all shaped exactly alike—which were hovering over
"Hill 60." It was noticed that, in spite of a four or five mile an
hour breeze from the south, these clouds did not alter their position in any
shape or form, nor did they drift away under the influence of the breeze. They
were hovering at an elevation of about 60 degrees as seen from our observation
point 500 feet up. Also stationary and resting on the ground right underneath
this group of clouds was a similar cloud in shape, measuring about 800 feet in
length, 200 feet in height, and 200 feet in width. This cloud was absolutely
dense, almost solid looking in structure and positioned about 14 to 18 chains
from the fighting in British held territory."

We
are talking, here, a "cloud" nearly the length of three football
fields, forty feet wider than one, and as tall as a twenty-story building. A
"chain" is a field-surveying term of linear measurement; eighty
chains are equal to a mile, so the cloud was positioned about one fifth of a
mile inside the British lines. The ANZAC observers were watching as the men of
the First Fourth Norfolk began their march up Hill 60 to join the fighting. But
the First Fourth never got there. Ever see one of those old war movies with a
proud and feisty British force marching snappily into the fray? Picture that
here, please; it helps the graphics.

When
they arrived at this cloud, they marched straight into it, with no hesitation,
but no one ever came out to deploy and fight at "Hill 60." About an
hour later, after the last of the file had disappeared into it, this cloud very
unobtrusively lifted off the ground and, like any fog or cloud would, rose
slowly until it joined the other similar clouds which were mentioned in the
beginning of this account. On viewing them again, they all looked alike
"as peas in a pod." All this time, the group of clouds had been
hovering in the same place, but as soon as the singular "ground"
cloud had risen to their level, they all moved away, northwards, i.e. towards Thrace.
In a matter of about three-quarters of an hour they had all disappeared from
view.

This,
of course, from trained observers who by the year 1915 certainly knew the
difference between a cloud and other things that may appear in the sky. And
note how slowly the "clouds" stole away. The affidavit concludes:

The Regiment mentioned
is posted as "missing" or "wiped out" [inside their own
lines?] and on Turkey surrendering in 1918, the first thing Britain demanded of
Turkey was the return of this regiment. Turkey replied that she had neither
captured this Regiment, nor made contact with it, and did not know that it
existed. A British Regiment in 1914-18 consisted of any number between 800 and
4000 men. Those who observed this incident vouch for the fact that Turkey never
captured that Regiment, nor made contact with it.

Not
only some eight hundred to four thousand men vanished but this was a
self-contained combat unit fully equipped and prepared to fight. I leave it to
your own imagination what the First Fourth encountered within that cloud, how a
fully equipped army would have reacted to a bizarre situation, why they
vanished, and to what conceivable fate.

I
give it to you here because it makes my own incident in Brentwood paltry in
comparison. I myself have found comfort in that comparison. But not much.

Chapter Sixteen:
 
Dancing in the Dark

I still sometimes find
myself wondering why I stepped so unhesitatingly into that "fog." It
would seem that the natural mechanisms for personal survival would have
intervened somehow, dictated caution and at least a tentative advance. In
reconstructing the moment in my mind, I find no memory of fear or even disquiet
although I had gone to investigate something because of its unusual character.
But I stepped right into it without a qualm.

Maybe
those men of the First Fourth later asked the same question of themselves. And
I guess I will wonder all my life what they found inside their cloud.

I
found a different world.

I
experienced a temperature differential at mid-stride, one foot in predawn,
misty, chilly coastal California and the other in a bright, pleasantly warm
Wonderland. The scene was both pastoral and aquatic, with green-banked canals
crisscrossing the entire field of vision as far as the eye could see.

The
sky was not blue but faintly purple. Reddish- tinged, puffy clouds appeared and
disappeared in rapid sequence as though the entire sky were being projected as
a study in time-lapse photography, yet there was nothing unreal about it. There
was no sun in that sky—but a panoply of luminously twinkling stars, with an
intensity equal to Venus at her brightest, seemed to be the light source, with
an effect somewhere between twilight and high noon on a cloudless day in
spring, bright but soft and no shadows upon the landscape.

There
were trees unlike any I had ever seen anywhere but still vaguely familiar here
and there, like viewing abstract art; the same with riotously colored fields of
flowers, great bowers of flowering shrubs, towering vines climbing into the
purple sky like seabeds of kelp rising from ocean depths.

I
was startled by the scene but, again, not alarmed. I walked right into it. I do
remember halting and looking back after maybe a dozen strides, expecting to see
the fog bank behind me. Instead, I was centered in the scene and there was
nothing behind me but more of the same.

I
remember thinking, there's no way back, but even that came with no sense of
alarm.

There
was no pathway or roadway, nothing whatever to suggest a desired direction of
travel, no artificial structures to indicate human presence or activity. It
seemed at first to be an entirely static scene, with myself the only sentient
creature within it.

I
was aware of a greatly heightened sensitivity within myself, as though all my
senses were extended and tingling into the contact with this strange
environment. I was breathing easily and walking effortlessly; I felt light, almost
buoyant; the air was sweet with odors and it seemed that I could even feel it
touching my face. I felt great, almost exhilarated, and I was thoroughly
enjoying my walk though I had no idea where I was or where I was going.

I
came onto a canal and strolled along its bank for a while before noticing that
the water was totally transparent yet I could not see anything representing a
bottom in its depths. The other bank was forty feet or so distant and though
the canal wound through the landscape, it seemed to hold that same width for as
far as I could follow it with my eyes. I could see things moving deep beneath
the surface but they were so far away I could not identify definite shapes or
patterns to the movements.

I
stopped and sat down close to the water's edge and lit a cigarette. It tasted
terrible. I tried to poke the cigarette into the water to put it out, but it
would not penetrate the surface. It was like trying to shove a finger into
stiff Jell-O.

I
was thinking how very weird that was, yet I accepted it without even reaching
for an explanation. It was simply water that could not be penetrated from its
surface.

But
then I very quickly received a demonstration that the water was not solid like
Jell-O. I saw a form approaching leisurely from the depths; it grew larger and
larger on a direct approach to where I sat until finally I recognized the
object as a dolphin—well, sort of a dolphin.

It
broke the surface no more than three feet from where I sat, only its head
projecting from the water although I could see clearly the entire body as
though it were suspended in air before me. This dolphin had very humanlike eyes
and its face was highly expressive.

I
did not see its mouth move but I distinctly heard with my ears a very pleasant
voice speaking in my language, incredibly gentle and melodious.

"I
thought I saw something up there. Hello. What are you called?"

Now
I know this must sound to you like Alice in Wonderland or some such, but it
only made me wonder again where Lewis Carroll got his idea for that story in
the first place. I mean I had a divided consciousness here. I knew that it was
a bizarre experience, but at the same moment I was going along with it as
though it was perfectly natural and commonplace. I mean, you know, talking to a
dolphin.

I
replied, "I am called Ashton Ford. Who are you?"

"Ashton
Ford," the dolphin repeated. "That is a pleasing sound. I am called
Ambudala." This is a phonetic approximation. It was a definite
four-syllable sound but with musical components that do not translate into
writing.

I
said, "Pleased to meet you. I seem to be a little lost. I thought Penny
Laker lived here but I can't seem to find her house. Do you know Penny?"

Ambudala
replied, "Perhaps I have heard the name but I would not know her if she is
a house-dweller. If you would rest a moment, however, I will consult the
Knowledge and seek a solution. Will you wait?"

I
said, "Sure. Thanks. I'll be right here."

Ambudala
slipped back beneath the surface. The water simply closed on him. There were no
waves or ripples, no disturbance whatever at the surface to mark his point of
departure. But I saw him streaking into the depths until he was too far away to
see with the unaided eye, and a moment later I saw him returning at a slightly
different angle. He moved with incredible swiftness. If he'd been in a tank at
Marineland, moving at that speed, he could have jumped hundreds of feet through
the air when he reached the top. But he came to a smooth halt, again with only
his head exposed.

He
was a bit breathless, though, as he reported to me, "Yes, Penny Laker is a
house-dweller but not in this domain. You have obviously broken the harmonic.
The Knowledge respectfully requests information as to how you accomplished
that."

I
countered with a curiosity of my own. "Can you distinguish that I am a
different species of life than you?"

He
immediately replied, "Oh, more than that, Ashton Ford. Yes, yes, much more
than that. Can you not distinguish that you are an entirely different reality
than I am?"

I
said, "I'm getting that impression, yes. Do you see many like me come
through here?"

“Time
to time, yes," the dolphin replied. "Will you provide the requested
information?"

The
thing still seemed entirely real to me.

I
told Ambudala, "Sorry, I don't know a thing about it. You'll have to ask
Donovan."

"Oh,
oh, oh," the dolphin replied, highly impressed and seemingly in some kind
of rapture over the very sound of that name. "You are sent by
Donovan?"

I
said, "Well..." and was trying to think of some way to respond to
that question when Ambudala again returned to the depths. This time he was a
mere streak through a crystal medium. And he did not return.

But
that was okay. Because moments later I caught another motion, this one in the
purple sky, a flashing like lightning inside a cloud except there was no cloud
in that region of the sky, and the motion became an approach as a small
disclike object hurtled in from the horizon. It came to a smooth halt at about
a thousand feet directly overhead then began a wobbling descent and landed
beside me.

It
was rounded on the bottom and flat on top, like a cantaloupe cut in half, made
of shiny metal with a bright sheen like chrome. No more than three feet across,
with a shallow cockpitlike scoop in the very center—again, like the cantaloupe
after you've cut it and scooped out the seeds. The cockpit was padded and lined
with a soft material, almost like automobile upholstery. There were no
instruments, and there was nobody I could see controlling the thing.

But
Donovan's voice came from it and told me, "Get aboard, Ashton."

I
stepped aboard and sat down. A clear dome came up from the periphery of the
cockpit and closed an inch above my head. There was no sound and not even much
sensation of motion as the disc lifted off and tilted into an incredible climb.

I
had a perfect view of everything around me, above me and even below me, and it
seemed that I was putting the purplish atmosphere behind me.

I
was streaking through space, in total darkness now in less time than I can
relate it, among the stars, one of the stars myself as far as I knew.

I
could hear sounds like tinkling glass, and they even began to take on a form
and substance like orchestrated music.

I
had the impression of dancing—dancing through outer space, a velvety
nowhere—yet at the same moment aware that I was moving faster than anything
ever thought possible within my mind—and I believe that I blacked out for a
moment because I remember experiencing extreme physical stress, like you would
get from great G-force, and I felt much more comfortable when I came out of the
blackout though now the sense of speed was such that I wondered if I had broken
the light barrier.

It
was not undirected motion. I knew that I was streaking along a precise path and
toward a precise goal but that was the limit of my "knowing."

And
obviously not nearly as much time had transpired in the tiny saucer as I'd
thought, because toward the end of that I suddenly realized that I was holding
a lighted cigarette, and I knew that it was the same cigarette I'd tried to
extinguish in the impenetrable waters of the canal in Ambudala's domain because
I recognized the way it was bent from the attempt.

I
tried to sample the taste of the cigarette but could not advance it toward my
mouth. I was locked absolutely motionless within that hurtling sphere, could
not move even a finger.

It
came to me, then, that I was not breathing.

How
could I not be breathing yet still be alive?

I
was thinking, dammit, and thought occurs within time, doesn't it?—so how come I
could get away with thinking and not breathing at the same time?

I
experienced a sensation of slowing, then of standing still, then a gentle
settling as a leaf falls from a tree. I was still in absolute darkness, and now
in absolute silence.

I
said aloud, "Where am I? What's going on?"

Donovan's
voice came from somewhere inside my own skull: "You got lucky, pal. This
is where you get out."

The
dome opened.

I
climbed out from utter darkness, feeling tentatively for a toehold with one
foot still in the cockpit, and stepped down into swirling mists. I was in
Penny's backyard, the wall of the carport directly behind me. I lifted the
cigarette to my lips and took a deep drag and it tasted mighty sweet.

So
where the hell had I been?

I
had no memory of walking into that fog with a lighted cigarette. The only one I
remembered lighting was the one beside the canal just before Ambudala had
appeared.

Where
the hell had I been?

"Obviously
you broke the harmonic," Ambudala had told me, as though it were not all
that unprecedented an event.

I
could not have imagined all that in the space of thirty or so paces from the
curb to Penny's carport.

Could
I?

Maybe
so.

But
I had good reason to think about it a while before coming to a decision.

That
reason was in Penny Laker's swimming pool. It

was
much larger than I'd last seen it, and there was no more tennis court.

And
a pair of unusual-looking dolphins were having a nice swim within its crystal waters.
Where the hell had I been?