The Secret Message

I’m hanging out with Eddie and a couple other guys on the old man’s back porch. We slouch in our deck chairs, leaning back with our feet up on the railing, laughing, eating lunch slowly, doing nothing at all. The omniscient geographical sense of position that you sometimes have in dreams tells me that we are across the street (and down a few plots) from my High School House, but this house, this porch, never existed.

The porch overlooks a vast open pit, a backyard that has been excavated, all life and character removed. It’s forty feet deep and hundreds of feet on each side. Way too big for this residential neighborhood.

The property owner is a senile old man who drifts in and out of the house, sometimes rambling on about nothing and everything, not quite participating in our conversations. We listen to see if his muttering ever makes sense, but it doesn’t really flow. He sometimes comments on passing vehicles or nearby sounds, but that’s the extent of his connection with reality.

(A bird sings). “Meadowlark, red-breasted, mates for life. Like Sarah and me, we met at the World’s Fair nineteen thirty six, she had a red gardenia in her hair. Hockey tournament in the park this weekend. The railing is wobbly. Bunch of crooks in the government, crooks.”

(A car passes). “1957 Plymouth Belvedere. Canvas top, shark fins, Great Barrier Reef. Too many sharks. Two three four five...”

Eddie has a concealed tape recorder, and he’s surreptitiously recording the old man’s stream-of-consciousness. Later... we’re back at home, at someone’s house, in a dim basement den lit in blue. We’re hunched over the tape recorder, listening and reliving, fading the volume up and down, slowing down and speeding up the playback, causing feedback, playing with the sound waves like strings in a cat’s cradle. But suddenly, buried deep in the static, recorded so quickly that the other sounds stretch slow like thick taffy behind it, there’s another voice on the tape. We zero in on it, muddying the sound of the old man’s voice to clarify this new speaker. It is not a human voice.

“We are the Vikra. Hearken to our message, carried through time and ether, our urgent plea. Help us. Help us. Only you can save us...”