All American Horror of the 21st Century

How Sweet It Was. Thomas F. Monteleone-2

“Well,” he said finally. “I’ve been thinking about this a lot—obviously—and I think there might be more to it.”

“Like what?”

“I’m not sure how to start this, but I’ll try.” Manzara cleared his throat, then started up again. “Have you ever heard or seen something that ... that gave you a weird feeling? A feeling that there was something special about, but you had no idea what it could be?”

I considered his question, but wasn’t sure where he was going with it. So: “Can you give me an example?”

“Sure. A couple of years ago, I was watching the History Channel or National Geographic or one like that, you know? I hate most of the crap on regular TV.”

“Yeah, me too,” I added. “Go on.”

“Hold on ... I’ve got some notes on this stuff,” he said. “Can you hang on while I pull them up?”

I said sure and waited through a few minutes of dead air, wondering what was with Manzara. He certainly sounded like a regular guy ... but isn’t that what all the neighbors always say about the donut who walks into the local hardware store and starts shooting everybody because they sold him the wrong size finishing nails?

“Still there?” he said. “Sorry, I had to remember how I’d filed them.”

“I know the feeling. So go on—what’s up?”

“Yeah, anyway, I was saying—I was watching one of those shows on cable, and I saw this show about ancient archeology.”

He paused for dramatic effect, and I wondered where the hell this was going—although there was a part of me that had a damned good notion.

“One of the sites they started talking about is this island off Okinawa,” he said. “And back in 1988, some scuba divers found this huge f*****g structure under the water near this island called ... let me see here ... ‘Yonaguni’ ... yeah, that’s it. Anyway, some professors finally got down to take a look at it a few years later, and they figured out what it was—a gigantic step-pyramid, a ziggurat, around the size of the Great Pyramid at Giza.”

“That’s pretty big,” I said, realizing I sounded like an i***t.

“Yeah, but there’s more. Various geologists have placed the age of the site at anywhere from twenty thousand to thirty thousand years ago. That’s at least ten times older than we’d imagined there was any civilization on Earth advanced enough to build anything close to that thing.”

Pausing to digest what he was telling me—because it was intriguing on its own merit—I also tried to figure what this had to do with me and why I’d contacted him about an old TV show that very few people remembered. So I asked him.

“It’s connected, man. Believe me. I’m getting to it. C’mon, what’s with you—you have a short attention span, or what?”

That kind of pissed me off, but I said “Okay, I’m listening.”

“Right, so anyway, I’m watching the show, and all of a sudden I get this weird feeling all over me. Like a chill, but deeper, colder. Like some vibration was struck somewhere and it went right through me, like every atom in my body had been touched. I ... can’t describe it any better than that, but that’s what it was. And I knew it was because of this strange set of ruins they’d found in the Pacific. That’s what I meant when I asked you if you ever affected by something you knew was ... weird, and somehow special to you ...”

I listened to his words and realized they were creating an odd somatic response in me. Like the way you feel when you recall a near-miss auto accident or some other moment of hideous danger that somehow passed you by, left you unscathed but terrified.

He must have sensed me hanging like I was, so he pushed on: “The primitives on the islands around there, they have this legend about an old god named ... let’s see, ‘Niraikanai,’ who supposedly rose up from the sea and ‘allowed’ the natives to ‘live.’ You ever heard anything like that?”

“Lots of cultures have similar myths,” I said. “You know, like Noah and the flood.”

“Yeah, but this is different,” said Manzara. “And you know it.”

He didn’t say anything, as if he knew I had something similar to share, and was willing to wait.

He was right. And I told him so. “Okay, how ‘bout this. I read this book a couple years back about ancient civilizations, and one of the places they talked about was this huge structure in Lebanon—at a place called Baalbek.”

I paused to see if he recognized it, and he jumped in. “Yeah, I know about it. Nobody knows how old the place is ... but the quarry where the stones were cut is like twenty thousand years old, and is almost fifty miles from where the platform was built.”

“Yeah, that’s it,” I said. “When I started reading about that place, I remember thinking that it all sounded somehow familiar to me. There were photos of these gigantic stones with weird writing on them, and I’m telling you, I kept thinking I’d seen it before.”

“You have!” said Manzara.

“Huh?”

“You saw it on Mr. Curiosity ...”

I didn’t say anything for a moment because I guess I’d already figured that one out, but again, it was one of those things I didn’t really want to deal with. I mean, none of it made much sense. I told Manzara.

“Of course it doesn’t make sense! It’s ... not part of us. Part of us humans?”

“Okay, now you’re starting to sound nutty,” I said.

“Don’t you think I don’t know that. I scare myself when I think about this shit.”

“Obviously it’s on your mind a lot.”

“Well, how ‘bout this, man ... How long have you been interested in ancient civilizations?”

I shrugged unconsciously. “I don’t know. I always have, I guess. Just one of those things that catches your interest, you know?”

“Sure I know!” said Manzara. “Same with me. Same with the Michigan lady. So what’s that all about?”

“I’m guessing coincidence isn’t high on your list.”

“What’re you—kidding me? C’mon, man ...” He spoke in a softer conspiratorial tone. “There’s a lot more to this than any of us can probably imagine.”

“Well, how do we find out what’s going on? What do we do next?”

Manzara paused for a minute. “I might have been just fooling around when I put that reference to Mr. Curiosity in my story. But now you and Miss Michigan have got me going on this. I think I’m going to take out some classified ads in the papers, and maybe in USA Today. I’ll bet there’s a lot more of us out there.”

“Sounds like a plan,” I said.

“Give me your phone number and your email. I’ll be in touch.”

I did, and he was.

* * *

About six months later, in early May, I got a cyber-note asking me to attend a special meeting at an address in the small Maryland town of Jarretsville. The invitation was from Vincent Manzara, and I knew what it was about. Since I ran my own business and did a little real estate on the side, I had no trouble scheduling the time and the trip, and after checking MapQuest for their usual half-assed, semi-inscrutable driving instructions, I headed south.

Jarrettsville hid itself in the middle of Maryland’s thoroughbred horse farm country, and my destination must have been one of its nicest in the last century: uncountable acreage of rolling meadows, punctuated by the occasional copse of shade trees, and surrounded by miles of rail-fencing all painted neatly white. In the center of this pastoral stateliness, lay a larger friendly-looking house and about six outbuildings such as stables, barns, and servants quarters. There was a mile long driveway up to the house and there were cars parked along both sides. Behind the barn, an expansive field held a lot more vehicles, enough to make it look like a very successful auto dealership.

I went inside and met Vincent and the owner of the property, a woman about our age named Virginia Bourner. Mrs. Bourner had recently become a widow when her horse-breeder husband rode his Lexus underneath a flatbed truck that had suddenly jackknifed across I-95 right in front of him during a thunderstorm. His vehicle’s roof, along with his head, had been sliced off in an instant. After she told me this, I expressed my condolences, then allowed her and Vincent to escort me outside where a huge tent had been erected, enclosing enough chairs to run a small college commencement.

“I told you there had to be more of us,” said Manzara.

“Looks like you were right.”

He smiled wryly. “Gee, why does that not make me feel all that good?”

“So what’s going on? What’s this all about?”

“You’ll see,” he said.

Eventually, after some attaching of nametags and a little punchbowl conversation, we all convened under the tent in an attempt to understand what had happened to us ... and perhaps the more important corollary question: why us?

I won’t try to catalogue the events or reconstruct the many dialogues that emerged from the day-long convocation. There was way too much of it, and until the moderators learned to keep things focused, there tended to be a lot of ranging off into the fringes of rational thinking ... which we all know is bounded by lots of quicksand. Suffice to say many of the attendees had shared very similar experiences regarding the interest, affinity, or arcane understanding of ancient archeological mysteries.

Remember what started all this: I saw a show on TV as a kid that only a minuscule, fractional percentage of the population remembers. So what does it mean or portend?

Several notions arose from the mass meeting that transcended the status of “feelings” or “opinion.” Here they are:

1. The program, Mr. Curiosity, did exist. The odds of all of us experiencing a mass hallucination in different parts of the country, in different time zones, and wildly different cultures and households was not even remotely possible.

2. We all learned “stuff” from Mr. Curiosity. We were fed information by this guy and it was bolted down in our subconscious where it remained unused until this day. It was like stumbling into a sub-basement in your house, and finding all this weird machinery there, all covered in tarps and oilcloths and not having clue what any of it might be used for.

3. We were not sure yet exactly what we were learning from the show, but we intend to find out.

4. There seems to be little question Mr. Curiosity had some connection to, or association with, evidence of ancient civilizations on the planet.

5. All this stuff is getting pretty scary.

After suffering through a logistically challenging “outdoor cook-out,” we all reconvened to witness our attempt to get some answers. Since our numbers included doctors and other scientific professionals, we had a chance to examine a variety of research techniques. Some would require months of highly focused research and/or experimentation (in the spirit of the hallowed scientific method) and we assembled volunteer teams to begin the torturous process to make them happen. Other ideas were attempted that evening, and they ranged far afield of mainstream investigative techniques. I sat in the front row brimming over with skepticism at what I was going to see ... or not see.

The first subject was a man from New York who worked for the Long Island Railroad.I watched as he sat at a small dais, rigged with a wireless microphone, calmly waiting for another guy in a black turtleneck and matching pants to inject him with syringe of clear liquid. A tall, redheaded woman, accompanied by short balding guy, stood behind them.

“I’m a salesman for a pharmaceutical company,” said the man. “I get lots of free samples.”

He paused as very nervous chuckle susurrated through the crowd.

“What I have here is a big favorite with the ‘alphabet agencies.’ It makes the old thiopental sodium cocktail look like Kool Aid.” He paused, looked at the Long Island Railroader. “You ready?”

“Shoot,” said the seated subject.

And Black Turtleneck Salesman did just that.

Ping. Mainline express via the biggest vein in the subject’s arm. I was amazed at how fast it reached his brain—maybe five or six seconds—and he started to nod around, neck muscles loose and swiveling.

That was the cue for the redhead and the bald guy to come around to the front, where the latter checked vital signs. He looked like a doctor, and probably was. Going under the supposition we’d tapped our population for specialists in every instance, I figured the redhead to be some kind of psychological pro (or an intelligence ops type.)

She sat directly in front of Long Island Railroad, spoke softly to him. “You are five years old. You are watching a show called Mr. Curiosity, can you see it?”

Pause. Then: “Yeah, I can ...”

“Can you hear him?”

“Yep.”

“What is he saying?”

Another pause. Then he spoke slowly, as if parroting what he was hearing: “Today we’re going to hear ... about a shipwreck ... in a very cold place. A story about a boat. The boat’s name is ... the Wilbur Whately ...”