Falling Against Gravity Read online

  As they watched, the saucer quietly and mysteriously glided over their town. Silently, with the occasional sputter of light smoke, the craft headed towards the Proctor family property, the highest on the ridge. It had a large Dutch-style tower windmill used for milling grain that spun contentedly and continuously. Across the yard from the windmill, Mrs. Proctor was on her hands and knees, pulling baby carrots and picking fresh snap peas from the vegetable garden, oblivious to what was heading her way.

  The boys watched in stunned disbelief as an arm of the windmill caught the thin metal of the saucer and viciously tore the craft from the sky. The windmill repeatedly smashed the object into the ground, ramming it over and over again as the arms came down on the large silver object. Debris splintered all over the property and rolled down the steep hill as the saucer was slowly and completely destroyed. The windmill stubbornly twirled its blades around and around, not inhibited by the thin metal fuselage. Out of the pounding and ripping of the wreckage, a round object was flung far away from the chaos like it was launched from a medieval trebuchet, bouncing away from the carnage and hurtling towards the boys and their cow. The boys were too scared to even move as it silently rolled to a stop at their feet. Even Ruthie was transfixed. Shocked beyond words, the boys looked at the spherical object on the ground in front of them and saw a reddish glowing stone, partially encased in a broken metal housing. After a few pulsing moments, the glow faded. The children’s eyes widened and Ruthie let out an astonished moo.

  Terrified and cowering, Mrs. Proctor lifted her head from the dirt. Pieces of carrot tops and other vegetables from the garden were splattered all over her face and clothes. Delicately, she wiped the dirt from her eyes. Across the yard, the devastated windmill was still grinding its broken arms into the wreckage. Shaken to her core, Mrs. Proctor was afraid of what she would see when she could focus again; but nothing could have ever prepared this middle-aged Texan woman for what was before her. There, lying in her garden, staring her face-to-face, eye-to-eye, was a mutilated, dying spaceman with his face half torn off, legs twisted, caked in blood and soil. He was humanoid looking – so much so that if he had come out of a train crash instead of a saucer hurtling from space, she never would have known the difference.

  The spaceman gurgled his last words into the soil and plant debris. “... All … for … Mars.”

  Mrs. Proctor, still with a mouthful of dirt, let out a glass-shattering scream of cold, searing terror.

  CHAPTER 2

  It was a frosty autumn night in 1906 and the sky looked like a massive, unmarked chalkboard. There were no stars in the sky, no lights on the wharf. Everything was completely, eerily silent. A couple of skittish ducks gave the first sign that something was moving through the murk. It took Ripley a couple of moments to even see the dark mass skulking towards the pier. The ship silently drifted on the river’s current, aided by a few brown sails and a skilled hand on the tiller. The Enyo had a couple of covered lights on board, but after a while it could be more easily seen reflecting from the effervescence of the rippling water. As his eyes adjusted and focused, Ripley could make out the movement of a few small groups of men who were waiting on shore for the ship to dock. He squinted a bit more and could see that some were waiting with horse drawn wagons, and there were even a couple of auto trucks. As dimmed lanterns near the dock were slowly lit, it was unsettling to realize that there were more people here in the dark than he had realized.

  Ripley leaned against the tailboard of the small trailer hitched to Charles Fort’s auto-vehicle. Beside him, Fort and Envar stood with their arms crossed, staring at the river. Fort was dressed in a brown leather jacket, khakis and high boots. Envar, Fort’s hired man, wore an official-looking black driving coat and dark cap. Ripley was wearing rubber boots and a tackle vest with a fishing rod awkwardly tucked under his arm. Envar was smoking pungent European cigarillos that made Ripley gag, but the large, broad shouldered Turk didn’t seem to care, and Ripley didn’t feel like raising the giant man’s ire by mentioning it. Envar was very comfortable with his quiet disdain of the much smaller Ripley. This both hurt Ripley’s feelings and made him question his own character. With his sentinel-like stature and cold gaze, Envar made people feel like he could see into their souls, and Ripley wasn’t comfortable with what Envar saw when he looked into his.

  Ripley turned to his best friend, Charles Fort. They had been bar-hopping and book-trading companions for years. He was pleased to be staying at Fort’s glorious home in New York City for a couple of weeks before Charles and his motley crew left for adventures overseas. This upcoming trip to Egypt and beyond gave Ripley uncomfortable pangs. Fort wanted Ripley to travel with them and made this abundantly known; but there was no way Ripley was going, which was becoming a growing source of tension between the two. Ripley was going to miss being with his friend and spending time with Anna, Charles’ wife. She was not going on the voyage either, but Ripley knew he would see less of her. After all, it would be rather inappropriate to be socializing with a married woman whose husband wasn’t around. On some level, he might even miss Envar. It was nice to be part of a unit, even one as dysfunctional as this crew. He enjoyed being on the team, sharing the taciturn secrets of Charles’ outrageous and ambitious plans. It was a first for him. Before now, Ripley always had to keep all his secrets to himself.

  He wouldn’t miss the danger, however. Fort’s way of both inadvertently and unintentionally wandering into risky and unpredictable situations was annoying, albeit sometimes exciting. His friend’s passion and drive towards researching and collecting evidence of the paranormal seemed to know no bounds, especially since Charles had inherited his family’s fortune. And he didn’t always walk away from these adventures unscathed. Charles had a fairly substantial head injury during his last investigation and almost died. Ripley shuddered at the memory. He didn’t want to think of what they had recently been through. He truly thought he’d lost Fort. It was hard to reconcile. To be perfectly honest, if he hadn’t lived through it, he wouldn’t have believed it.

  Little fish flitted around the surface of the water near the run-down pier. They were at the Black Dock. Many people had never heard of it. Most days it was just a decrepit old pier on a particularly deep part of the Hudson River, but on occasional well-planned nights it was a hub of illicit activity. Unfortunately for the men conspiring in contraband this night, however, the Poughkeepsie police force had finally caught someone willing to squeal about the next shipment that was arriving. The police had stealthily arrived with a strong intent of shutting down this operation and making many arrests. The new police commissioner of New York City, Theodore Bingham, thought the majority of crime in New York came from outside of New York. Bingham was a driven man, determined to be the bane of rum runners and foreign smugglers. To this end, he ordered the entire unit to quash any and all illegal behavior happening at the dock. What this clandestine cadre of criminals all failed to notice this moonless night was that there were numerous young Poughkeepsie policemen crawling on their hands and knees into hilltop positions.

  Fort pulled out his intricate pocket watch, glancing at it before loudly snapping it shut in annoyance. “Four a.m. already. They’re late.” He slipped the watch back into his waist coat’s pocket, then rubbed his hands together while blowing into them, desperately trying to generate even a bit of warmth in his cold fingers.

  Ripley shook his head, exasperated. “Explain to me why we're really out here in the middle of the night. This obviously has nothing to do with fishing, you liar.”

  Fort snickered a little. “Sorry, Ripley. No fish tonight, but a fine catch if everything goes well.”

  Ripley’s heart skipped a beat. He was not ready for another risky undertaking. It wasn’t in his emotional or physical constitution, especially at this hour. Awkwardly, he placed the fishing rod on the ground and pulled his collar up around his neck, buttoning another clasp on his vest to ward off the chill. “What is going on here, Charles?” His voice was full of
concern. He looked at Envar. He knew that he knew and started to get visibly agitated that he was the only one in the proverbial dark out here under the cloak of night. What else could be out here? Hobgoblins? Vampires? Moth people? Given Fort’s interests, it might easily be any of those things or even worse.

  Charles tried to placate his friend. He put his hand on the back of Ripley’s neck and gave it a gentle squeeze. “Relax, Ripley, nothing too exciting tonight. This is how one buys illegal or difficult to find items. I’m here for an important delivery from some real characters. I thought you might find this interesting.”

  Ripley pulled away from Fort’s hand. “No. I find it cold and more than a little unsavory.” His anxiety was rising. “What are you up to, Charles? And what illegal item is it that you need so badly that we’re here in the middle of the night?”

  Instead of answering, Fort stepped forward to get a better sight of the cutter quietly sliding up to the dock. The ropes were silently being thrown to shore and people were tying them tightly to the tree stumps being used as makeshift bollards. It was as if both sight and sound were muted somehow. Seamen, like shadows, moved quietly and quickly between the ship’s deck and the dock, scurrying down the mooring lines. As the ship snugged in, two deckhands threw a gangway down and tied it in. A few minutes after the ship touched the pier, a short, round man smoking a pipe tromped down the gangway, making sharp whistling bird sounds and silently gesturing his hands to his crew. Deckhands quickly jumped at his covert commands. A large Maori man with tribal markings on his face and enormous tattooed arms in a sleeveless shirt carried a leather satchel, obediently keeping one pace behind the pipe-smoking man.

  Impressed by the snap in their step, Fort looked back at Ripley. “No, no. Nothing illegal, just very hard to find. High quality, liquid mercury is not easily purchased in large amounts. And we need large amounts of the purest metal available. And the very best comes from Peru.”

  Ripley kicked his fishing rod. “So you are buying mercury from Peruvian pirates?”

  Fort smirked. “Not pirates, my good man. They’re seafaring entrepreneurs!”

  Ripley glared at Fort, then at Envar. Envar just kept drawing at his smoke, still bored. “That sounds like a grand case of self-delusion,” the small bespectacled Ripley said, stomping angrily to Fort’s side.

  Fort turned and playfully slapped his companion on the back. “Easy now, Ripley, we don't want to get into diagnosing each other’s psychosis do we?” Fort squeezed his shoulder.

  Ripley’s head lowered and his eyes drifted towards the ground. He recognized that this was a sore spot with his friend, plus he had his own vulnerabilities. “No ... I suppose we don't,” he mumbled.

  Fort could read Ripley’s annoyance. This wasn’t how he hoped the night would go. “If you'd like, you can wait beside the auto-car if you don't want to get dirty.”

  Ripley turned and went towards the car. “I don't want any of this and I don’t like you tricking me.” Ripley sulked as he threw his fishing rod into the vehicle and climbed in with a scowl. Fort called back to him, “You wait, I’m sure you’ll find this interesting yet.” Ripley responded with a small “hrumph” from the backseat.

  Finally, the ship was fully docked and the deckhands quickly unloaded various goods to shore, both by gangway and the ship's davit, a small crane used to move stores and cargo to and fro. The deckhands, some in their bare feet and some in soft leather shoes, made almost no sound as they moved. The men on land were handing money to the quartermaster and loading crates onto their horse-drawn wagons and motorized trucks. The quartermaster passed the money to his muscled assistant, who carefully pinned the bills and notes together before placing them into his sturdy satchel. As the activity progressed, more and more lanterns were lit around the vehicles.

  After about thirty minutes, almost all of the crates, cages, and barrels were unloaded. Fort had approached the quartermaster, but was turned away by the large Maori and told to wait. He sat cross-legged on the trunk of the car, impatiently waiting for his turn while Ripley grumbled in the backseat, almost hiding. Envar shook his head at Ripley and moved along to place a small ramp on the trailer. Fort rapped on the rear window to get Ripley's attention. He pointed towards a man who was pulling tarps off of cages, revealing various exotic animals. Ripley couldn’t help himself and pressed his face against the window to see cages filled with distressed and perturbed penguins, llamas, and one obsidian black jaguar.

  “Now tell me, Leroy! Did you ever think that you would see a penguin in New York?”

  “No, not outside of a zoo somewhere.” He popped his head up even higher. “And look, Charles! That's a Peruvian jaguar! Incredible.”

  “I think you're right. And a very large, angry one, at that.” The feline hissed and paced around its tiny wooden enclosure. Ripley pulled out his notebook and pencils from his inner breast pocket and started sketching the magnificent specimen. His fingers and hands raced, drawing as many of the exotic animals and characters he could spy. Without looking down, he repeatedly flipped the pages, frenetically starting new renderings. He would never admit it, but he was now glad Fort had brought him along.

  Fort jumped down off the auto-car and waved to the quartermaster, who was busy speaking with a couple of bearded men in long oilskin coats. The two men towered over the stout seaman. The dark-featured man talked authoritatively with the quartermaster while his blonde, mutton-chopped associate hovered closely, keeping his eyes on the large Maori man. A third man stood in the shadows behind the other two. He wore a dark, wide brimmed hat and his collar was turned up to hide his features. The quartermaster dismissively acknowledged Fort but continued to speak with other men. Fort noted the quartermaster’s eyes widened as the leader of the three men handed over a bulging envelope. Fort didn’t judge – after all, he had his own billfold of cash ready to hand out before the night’s end. The quartermaster thumbed through the money and then nodded to the leader. Fort heard him say, “Aye, Mr. Blake. We’ll see that your needs are met.” The quartermaster pushed the wad of bills back into the envelope and handed it to his tattooed assistant before walking towards Fort and Envar. He deftly stepped out of the way of another pallet of penguins that was being lowered from the crane aboard the ship.

  The deckhands moved swiftly and efficiently in the low light. Pallet loads, crates, and barrels were offloaded and piled on the hard packed ground. As fast as the crane could be unshackled, three men swung it back aboard and readied it for the next cache of contraband. Barrels of rum were rolled down the gangway almost nonstop. Ripley couldn’t believe how well organized these pirates were.

  Fort couldn’t take it anymore. He hurried towards the quartermaster. “Good evening, Captain. How–”

  The Englishman abruptly cut him off before he could say anything else. “I’m not the captain of this vessel.”

  “Okay then. Good evening, sir!” Fort offered his hand for a shake. The quartermaster ignored it and reached in his vest pocket, pulling out a leather pouch. The short, round seaman looked Fort up and down. He was obviously unimpressed. Fort noted the disdain, but attempted to be affable. He gestured towards the crate of penguins. “Where might these aquatic birds be heading?”

  The quartermaster unwrapped the cord from his tobacco pouch. “Into a bloody stew pot I hope! Stinking fowl creatures. And they could throw the mangy cat in too, for all I care.” The quartermaster kicked the jaguar’s cage. The animal gave an unsettling low growl. “Aye, that’s right, I’m talking about you, ya filthy beast!” He kicked the cage again.

  Fort’s eyes popped. “Alright,” he said changing gears. “How long before my barrel of mercury is off-loaded and made ready?”

  “Aye, sir, there's been a problem with your order. Walk over here away from those smelly little birds,” the quartermaster said with a rumpled face as he stuffed some tobacco into his exquisitely carved ivory pipe.

  Fort turned white and visibly started to panic. He jumped in front of the rotund man and stoo
ped to look him in the face. “What kind of problem? Don't you have it? I paid extra, in advance, to assure it would get here.” Fort’s voice rose as he hammered his finger into his palm. The quartermaster shifted his position and the Maori straightened up and placed a firm hand on his large kukri blade’s hilt.

  “Aye, well, the problem is that those men over there just paid far more for the entire load of mercury, over and above their original order,” the quartermaster calmly replied, lighting his pipe with a match.

  “What?” Fort shouted, then tried to breathe deeply to gather his composure and successfully salvage this essential transaction. “I can pay more if I have to.”

  “I'm sorry, but they just secured every drop of mercury we can procure for the next year. No worries, however. I’m an honest bloke. I'll give you your money back.”

  “I don't need the money! I need that mercury! Tonight! What kind of business are you running here? This is piracy!” Fort angrily waved at the pipe smoke in his face.

  Ripley was close enough to hear the exchange. “Ha – I knew it!” he blurted loudly from the car. Fort’s head darted back at Ripley’s voice. Ripley peeked up and felt Fort’s look of icy daggers. Feeling a bit sheepish, he meekly withdrew deep into the back of the seat.

  The quartermaster pointed towards the davit swinging overhead, heavily weighted with a pallet loaded with small metal barrels. “That's their mercury now, and you'd best take your money and go home. And it's not piracy, it's capitalism,” he snorted.