As The Darkness Falls - Excerpt

AS THE DARKNESS FALLS - "Things Are Not What They Seem"

Chapter 1

Lazy Hoof Ranch – Present Day

Shooting stars of color sprayed in all directions like celebratory Independence Day festivities. The colors faded into hot white sprigs that diminished and melted into his peripheral view.

He found himself floating above the outskirts of Geneva, Switzerland. In the distance the snowcapped Alps glistened under the Sun. The breeze was cool, but not cold. This was a perfect vantage point: A clear day in the crisp blue sky.

Hovering at a couple thousand feet, he had a clear field of view of the CERN facility and the surrounding farmlands. Those empty farmlands were equally as important as the CERN campus itself.

Buried at almost six-hundred feet below ground was The Large Hadron Collider, an atom-smasher and the world’s biggest machine. And the accompanying seventeen mile circular beam tunnel was also entombed under all of that farmland. The reason that he knew these things was because he worked there as a lead physicist for many years.

As he mused about his former life, something strange began to happen on the ground. Wanting to get a better look, he willed himself to go lower and he slowly floated down. Closer to the ground now, he could barely make out what looked like ants moving to and fro. He realized that they weren’t ants, but people going and coming from the main building, L1, of CERN.

A dark blur of movement caught his eye. Without warning, like a giant spinning drain, the whole seventeen mile LHC circle above ground began to rotate counterclockwise. As it spun, the natural colors of white, brown and green began to smudge and bleed together, making everything in this vortex look the color of a dull gray.

The area spun like a washing machine on its spin cycle. But it wasn’t a drain like he first thought. It was an opening or portal of some kind, turning and churning with power generated from deep beneath the earth.

Without warning, black vapor began to spit out from the center of the swirling hole. The blackness continued to pour out from the center like a torrent. This vapor slowly thickened and became a black membrane. It was so thick that within a few moments, he could no longer see any other distinctive colors… save black.

As he floated high above the turning below, movement in the corner of his eye caught his attention. He looked up and saw a white light speeding down toward Earth, almost like a falling star. Rather than resembling a meteor, it looked like lightning striking in the middle of the day. Its destination appeared to be the exact center of the churning black membrane. When it finally hit, it was instantly sucked in and covered over, without a trace.

After the lightning strike, the blackness grew and expanded even faster. It kept rising and spreading out in all directions from whence it came. As the black circle rose to his height, he realized that it was not a liquid or solid mass. It was the joining of individual parts, too numerous to count. These individual parts were giant beings whose color was dark and black as midnight.

As the creatures rose higher they reached his level in the sky. From this vantage point, he could clearly see them for what they were. They were soot covered, black winged creatures that looked like giant humans, but were a mass of muscle. With eyes that were blood red and faces contorted with rage, he knew exactly who and what they were.

Then, with unexpected and sudden violence, he was jerked from that place to a different location. All at once he was floating in front of a massive huge ball of fire. He knew it to be the Sun.

As he looked to either side of the orange and yellow ball, he could see billions of stars in the distance. Like above Geneva, he floated there in space without the need of oxygen or protective clothing. He was now so close to the Sun that it took up his whole field of view.