We had built a rude camouflaged altar far up the north fork of Dry Creek, a desolate canyon that winds up into the hills behind the university campus. There we assembled all our materials and freshly practiced rituals and we rehearsed. The night before we planned to conduct our actual summoning we held a full dress rehearsal.
It went stunningly well. We pranced and danced around the altar for two hours. We were both dressed with robes, staffs, helmets, ritual knives and other accouterments. Had he seen us, Moses himself would have been proud—anyone else would have been sure that neither of us were dealing from a full deck. We went through the rituals and sacrificed a properly anointed lamb. As the climax approached, we both felt a wave of exultation radiating from the sacrificial fire. In the distance we heard the roll of thunder, and saw the flash of lightning from distant storms that had rolled in during the August evening.
At the last moment, as planned, the final summons went unspoken and unenacted. We stopped and grinned at each other across the low flickering fire on the altar. Tomorrow night we would complete the ritual. The exaltation we felt that evening would grow and be transformed into a material creature summoned from the dimensions beyond—an angel—and we both knew it!
Quickly we cleaned up the altar and the surrounding areas, as always careful to remove every trace of evidence. Tonight was no different, except that the storms continued their approach and their thunder and lightning flashes accented our lingering eerie feelings.
“What’ll he be like, Bergen?” I asked.
“You know as much as I do now, Horace. One thing for sure, he’ll look strange. He may be too big or too small to see, but that seems unlikely.
“I think the most important thing is that Ezekiel and John both speak of ‘living creatures’. Whatever he is, he won’t just be a hypercube. Ezekiel gives each creature four different faces facing four different directions. That must mean they always seem to be looking at you. As for the wings and the human hands under the wings and the ‘whirling wheels’ full of eyes, I can’t imagine a being that would have use for all of those. But then, we don’t have a multidimensional perspective.”
“You don’t think the straight legs and the hooves like calves, sparkling like polished bronze, are a big clue?” I teased him.
“The sparkling part may be, whether it’s brass or chrysolite! That’s why we’ve got the goggles and the filters for the cameras, because maybe he, or it, will be too bright to see. There have certainly been many descriptions of angels that say that.”
“What’ll you ask him?”
“Well, I’ve been giving that a little thought. But to tell you the truth, I haven’t really decided. I guess I kind of thought I’d go back to the basics and ask him what is the true nature of God? Does He have a plan? Are we anywhere near right?”
I snorted, “Huh! Sound like silly questions to me. You’ll just get the same old evasive answers: ‘Sure there’s a plan, but you’ll only get parts of it in your time’ and that sort of stuff.”
“You’ve got something better in mind?”
“ … No.”
It was as we were walking away, and after I said that, the thought struck me. I got a queer, oozy feeling in me, and a thrill ran up my spine.
“Wait a minute,” I said.
I turned to Bergen.
“Bergen, if we succeed tomorrow—and you and I both know we will—do you know what this means? It means there really is a God. A personal God. Do you realize that I’m still an agnostic?
“How can I be that when proof is almost on our doorstep!”
I turned him to face me.
“Bergen, have you prayed on this matter? Have you really prayed about what we’re going to do? Can you help me pray about it right now?”
I found myself getting frantic. We stopped where we were, about fifty feet from the altar, and we prayed.
We’d only been praying for about thirty seconds when Bergen sniffed.
“Did you remember to clean up that altar fire. I smell smoke.”
“I did!”
We both looked back at the altar. The canyon there was filled with a billowing cloud of thick smoke. We rushed back towards the altar, fearing that we might have somehow started a forest fire in the surrounding scrub oak trees. As we approached, there was a nearby flash of lighting, a clap of thunder, and the hiss of wind moving through the oaks in the canyon. The wind blew the smoke away from us. We saw the smoke was pouring out from the bare rock of the altar. We gasped. The feeling of exaltation was back, like floodgates had been opened.
Without thinking I got out the video camera and started recording.
As the wind blew away the smoke, it revealed a bright glow hovering over the altar. The glow turned into a vaguely man-shaped being. Bergen and I fell to our knees, but I kept the camera going.
The being was very peculiar and hard to see distinctly. He seemed to be facing many ways at the same time but I could see all the faces!
“He’s a multidimensional spirit,” whispered Bergen.
Suddenly the being focused his attention on us. He looked at us, then he smiled and said in a soothingly inflected boy-like voice.
“Well, Bergen and Horace, you have been granted your deepest wish. You have been visited by an angel. Rise and behold me, but do not touch me, Bergen!”
The warning seemed peculiarly superfluous. Neither Bergen nor I had even risen from our knees yet.
“For my body is perfected,” he continued, “and if you were to touch me then your body would become perfected too. But it would not be good for you to do that now. Your time has not yet come.”
The angel paused. We finally stood up.
“Why do you come now?” asked Bergen. “We didn’t complete the summons. We were planning that for tomorrow.”
“That’s correct. But why wait? You’ve demonstrated your desire, commitment, and devotion.”
“That’s all it took to summon you?”
“Truthfully, there are other factors that make coming now more convenient. I know this because I am indeed a multidimensional. I can see the past and the future with the same ease that I see you, all of you, in this present.”
“You’re saying all this work … this study for translation and precision … was in vain?”
“Oh hardly! It was critical as a channeling for your effort. Without the ritual and the talismans I’d’ve never taken notice. Your efforts blazed out to me on the timeline. They were like a beacon directing me to you in space and time. Now, Bergen, did you have a question for me?”
Bergen stood there dumbfounded. I finally took my eye out of the viewfinder and looked over at him to see what was the matter. His mouth was moving like a fish, but nothing was coming out.
“Oh, he’ll get it out, Horace, but why wait? Our time in this dimension runs short—Bergen’s and mine.” The being said this in a familiar sort of way—like a father or a brother looking at a son soon leaving.
He turned to me. I turned back to the viewfinder.
“The answer is no. Not as you beings have imagined him. There are other beings but nothing like that could exist.”
“Is there really a God as we understand him?” blurted Bergen, finally asking the question that the angel had just answered. And after a moment, “Then why do we think he exists?”
“You humans are blessed with an active imagination and, curiously, one you believe in. We find that fascinating and incomprehensible. This trait has served you well over the millennia but it does lead to certain peculiarities of behavior.
“Tell me, Bergen. What do you think I am?”
“An angel.” He was regaining his presence of mind.
“Just that? Nothing more?”
Bergen fell silent again.
Under most circumstances, this kind of visitation and attention from an alien being would have rendered me as speechless as Bergen. But the video camera gave me strength. With it running I felt like we were interviewing this being not for our own sakes but for the world’s sake.
“Are you something more?” I asked.
Now it was the angel who looked and sounded distant or distracted. He seemed to be moving more and looking around in some peculiar sort of way. He was actually fading in and out a bit.
“Three have come to this spot. Two will leave. One will leave with the two. One will leave with nothing … but the message.”
Finally he focused again and said forcefully.
“Bergen, have you the talismans?”
Bergen gasped, then shouted, “No, I won’t give them to you!”
“So I have seen,” said the angel.
“If you’ve foreseen this, why do you bother to ask?” I inquired peering from behind the viewfinder on the camera.
The angel smiled at me, “It is for your sake, Horace, that I continue this charade. Bergen is doomed. But you will live on to tell this tale. You are the chosen.”
I continued to question him, “Why have you angels stayed away for so long, and finally come now, in this age?”
“It was necessary for the development of your race. About two thousand years ago we became aware that your racial development was being altered significantly by our presence. You were entering a phase in which you needed a rapid development of science to sustain the material comforts you were developing. This was in the period you call the Roman Empire. But instead of developing the necessary science you were devoting your creative energies to arguing about us.”
“The early Christians.”
“Early Christians, late pagans, middle Jews, Zoroastrians, call them what you like. The point is how religiocentric the thought of the period was.
“As a result science and the Empire withered. They were replaced with a Dark Age of ignorance and frustration. The good intentions of our teachings were lost under the grinding weight of day-to-day problems like poverty, malnutrition, and disease. We had to stay away so you would not use us as a crutch to avoid solving the problems of your relations with your material universe.
“Couldn’t you help us with material problems as well?”
“You live in a 3-D world. Can you help Bugs Bunny with the material things in his world? That’s how you look to us.”
“I don’t know. I never gave it much thought.”
“I forgot. In your case you might, you have this peculiar imagination. No, we couldn’t, you needed to solve your own material problems.
“But now you have! You’ve developed the necessary tools—technology and the sciences—and your attitude towards dealing with the material world is one of confidence. You will now solve these physical and economic challenges on your own, whether we are here or not, so now we can return. We can now bestow upon you our insights into other areas of existence without affecting how you treat your material accomplishments.”
While the angel was saying this Bergen had fished the talismans out of his pack. He was clutching them tightly to his chest.
The angel focused his attention on Bergen and said in a mocking tone, “Oh, how nice of you to get them out for me, Bergen. But it was quite unnecessary, you know. No matter where you put them, I can see them. And … ”—he paused as one of his arms sort of reached into thin air—“ … take them.”
The disks winked out of existence with a pop. Bergen’s arms slapped into his chest as he cried out in dismay. They were gone!
We looked back at the angel. His hand had reappeared. He held the precious blued-steel disks high over his head and laughed.
At the sight of this Bergen went berserk. He ran up to the angel and tried to climb up him. But as soon as he touched the angel he slowed and became paralyzed, and the angel’s glow started spreading over his body.
The angel held him, lifted him up, cradled him. His face was filled with deep sorrow as he looked down on Bergen.
The lightning flashed once again. The rain started.
The angel said tenderly, “Your body is now being perfected, Bergen. You are becoming multidimensional again. But I’m afraid your mind, strong as it is, won’t be able to stand the shock. You’re being blessed before your time and, from this point on, your fate I cannot read even as I cannot read my own. But I’ll care for you as best I can.”
“What’s happening?” I cried.
Through the thickening rain the angel looked back at me through pained eyes and said, “We are being reunited.”
“You could see it coming and yet you let it happen?”
The speech was slurred and labored, “Time runs differently for me … In the 3-D world I see my tracks before, during, and after I make them. The only question is when they will be made in 4-D time. My 4-D time has come.”
“But—” He waved me off. He was fading fast and not nearly as pleasant to look at as before. His exultation was now heavily tinged with pain.
“You are now a witness—a prophet, as your people will call you. Your world still cannot understand us. But you will add your testimony and your understanding to the body of knowledge about us. Then one day you too will rejoin your ‘multidimensional spirit’, as Bergen called me. And hopefully your union will be more pleasant than Bergen’s and mine has been.”
“But what is my message?”
“You … are … the message.”
As Bergen and the angel faded into the raining gloom, it seemed that Bergen’s body was merging into the angel’s.
<<<*>>>
How long I stood there in the rain I don’t know. What I do remember vaguely is hearing the roar of the flash flood as it came howling down the canyon.
There was water surging around my feet before I realized my danger. I started for the gully wall. I moved barely faster than the rising water, but I couldn’t see where to go. I came to a steep muddy wall I couldn’t climb. I grabbed a tree root, and, while hanging on, dropped equipment and shed the bulky robes. But I kept the video camera. It was soaked, but it held the recording that held the image of the angel.
I was naked; the water was still rising, but I was still hoping I could hold on to the root until the flood passed.
All of a sudden a nearby lightning flash changed that plan. It revealed an uprooted oak rolling my way that would surely drag me under, and a path leading up over the mud bank 20 feet downstream. Instantly I let go, and aimed for the path. I hit it, barked my shins, and started slip-slopping my way up on hands and knees. Before I was clear, the tree caught up; knocked me flat, nearly pulled me off, then rolled on, leaving me with a back full of bloody scratches. I climbed clear, and found I no longer had the camera.